Chapter 3
H
e encircled her upper arm with his hand. "I'll drive you wherever you need to go."
"You'll do no such thing."
"We need to talk."
There's nothing to talk about."
"Like hell," he said, lowering his face to inches above hers. "You just told me I've got a teenage son. One million would be a conservative estimate of how many questions I've got to ask you. Until I get some answers, I'm sticking to you like glue. Now, for the final time, I'll drive," he concluded emphatically.
Marnie would have rebelled, but he had a death grip on her arm as they went downstairs. It would have been foolish to engage in a tug-of-war she couldn't possibly win.
Then, too, she reasoned that he was due an explanation. Her dignity was tinged with hauteur, but she went peaceably
"Lock your door," Law told her. "Don't you have a burglar alarm system?"
"No."
"You should. This is a large house with lots of ways for a thief to break in."
He ushered her through her front door and down the sidewalk to his waiting Porsche.
Once she was situated in the passenger seat, he went around the low, long hood and slid behind the steering wheel.
"Where to?"
She gave him the name of the street along with the expressway exit to take. Within minutes they were speeding down the inside lane of the freeway Marnie gripped the edge of her seat. He drove as though he were strapped inside a rocket. It didn't help her nerves to notice that his eyes spent more time on her than on the road.
Having tolerated that keen stare for as long as she could, she demanded, "What are you staring at?"
"You. You're so tiny. You don't look like you could carry a child. And" – he shook his head in bafflement – "it confounds me that I don't remember sleeping with you."
His eyes dropped to her mouth, then to the slender column of her neck, then to her chest, finally to her lap. His intensity made her feel naked. She was tempted to cover herself with her hands.
"I must've been real drunk," he said roughly. "Otherwise I think I would remember having sex with you."
"I've never had … I've never slept with you." She kept her head straight and stared through the tinted windshield, finding it unnerving to make eye contact with him and thinking that at least one of them should be watching the road. "David isn't my son."
"Then—"
"He's my sister's child. You and she…" She shrugged awkwardly and gave him a quick glance and a tepid smile. "It's the next exit. You'd better get in the other lane."
He did, whipping in front of a bakery truck. The driver sat on his horn and shouted an obscenity. The stop sign at the bottom of the ramp hardly gave Law pause before he took the turn in third gear.
"Your sister supposedly got pregnant by me, right?"
"Not supposedly. She did. It was a summer romance."
"What summer?"
"You had just graduated from the Naval Academy and were about to go on active duty."
He instantly became defensive and belligerent. "How do you know David's mine?" She shot him a withering glance. "Okay, okay he looks like me a little, I'll admit. But that doesn't prove anything."
"I don't have to prove it," she retorted. "It makes no difference to me whether you believe it or not. Turn right at the corner."
He impatiently waited for the signal light to change, then went through it like a bronco out of the chute. "There's the rest home," she said gratefully when they were still a block away. It would take him at least that far to reduce his speed enough to turn into the drive.
"You can drop me at that side door. I've got a key so I can let myself in to see her at any time."
It was a small church-supported facility with lovely grounds and a highly qualified staff.
Mrs. Hibbs's stroke hadn't left her completely paralyzed but disabled enough to require round-the-clock nursing. Moving her out of the house had been a heartbreaking decision for Marnie, especially knowing that her mother would never leave the rest home alive.
It had been even more difficult for Marnie to admit how much strain had been relieved when her mother left the house. For the last several years she had become increasingly bitter and impossible to please.
When Law brought his car to a stop at the private side entrance, Marnie opened the door and placed one foot on the pavement. She spoke to him over her shoulder.
"I don't know who sent you those letters telling you about David, but they did not come from me. I never intended for you to know about him or vice-versa. I don't want anything from you, especially money. So just go on about your business, leave me to mine, and forget that today ever happened. Thank you for the ride."
She got out. At the door of the hospital, while she fumbled with the lock that she usually opened so deftly she wanted to turn and take a final, long look at him.
It had been seventeen years since she'd last seen him. He'd waved them good-bye, then turned and jogged down the beach, looking like a young, vibrant sun god, golden and beautiful and destined for fame.
Her breaking heart had said a secret good-bye to him then. She didn't now. She didn't allow herself the luxury of looking back before entering the sterile building.
She remained in her mother's room for over an hour. During most of that time Mrs.
Hibbs slept, waking up only occasionally to speak a few slurred sentences to Marnie.
Despondent, Marnie left her. When she came out of the room, Law was pacing the hallway. The nurses at the station at the end of the hall were all atwitter, but he was paying attention to nothing save the gleaming tile floor as he walked to and fro like a caged lion.
"You're still here?" Marnie asked. She was already feeling emotionally raw after the visit at her mother's bedside. Seeing Law upset her further.
"How were you planning to get home?"
"Taxi."
He shook his head and escorted her to the nearest exit. "Taxis are unreliable in this town. You ought to know that." Minutes later they were once again in his Porsche with only the console and seventeen years between them.
"How is your mother?"
"She's dying."
After a respectful pause he said, "I'm sorry."
"They keep her medicated to minimize the damage of the little strokes she continues to have. Most of the time she's groggy. When she's lucid, she talks about my father and Sharon. She also cries a lot."
"It was in Galveston, wasn't it?"
"You mean when we met?"
"It was on the beach, right?"
"Yes," she said, wondering how much he remembered. "My family was renting a beach house close to the one your family was renting."
Squinting through the windshield, he murmured, "There were two of you. Sisters."
"My older sister, Sharon, and me, Marnie."
"Sharon and Marnie. Yeah, I've got it now. Your sister was quite a looker."
Marnie ducked her head slightly. "That's right."
"You were just a kid."
"Fourteen."
"And your daddy was a preacher, wasn't he? I remember we had to sneak off to drink beer."
"You talked Sharon into drinking some."
He laughed. "But you wouldn't. Goody-two-shoes she called you."
"I was never as adventurous as Sharon."
He contemplated that for a moment, then remarked, "If Sharon slept with me, she probably slept with dozens of other guys."
"She was only sixteen that summer. You were her first."
"Sixteen?
Sixteen
?" he repeated, his face going ashen. "I thought she was older than sixteen."
"She looked older," Marnie said in a low voice.
"She sure as hell did. Acted older too. Her attitude had left sixteen behind long before I met her. I remember how well she filled out the top of her bikini. She sure as hell didn't have a teenager's body."
"I'm not arguing that," Marnie snapped. Irrationally it annoyed her that he remembered how well-endowed Sharon was. It didn't surprise her, of course, she just wished he'd stop referring to it.
"But that's how old she was, sixteen. And turning up pregnant the first week of your junior year in high school can have grave repercussions especially if your father happens to be a well-known minister in the community."
Law turned into the parking lot of a brightly lit coffee shop. "You look like you could use something to drink."
"I'd rather you take me home."
"Look," he said with diminishing patience, "you're shaken and upset. Wouldn't a Coke or a cup of coffee do you some good? For heaven's sake, I'm not asking you to get drunk or spend the night with me. Are you still such a goody-two-shoes that you can't have coffee with a man?"
Without waiting for her answer, he got out, slamming the car door behind him. He came around for her. She watched eyes light up with recognition as the hostess led them to a booth. Whispers and soft exclamations of surprise and delight followed them like a wake.
Self-consciously she slid into the booth.
"Does that happen everywhere you go?"
"What?" He looked at her with perplexity. "Oh, you mean the celebrity bit? Ignore it."
She tried, but it wasn't easy to do since she was getting as close a scrutiny as Law was.
When the waitress approached with menus, she asked for Law's autograph, which he gave her along with their order for two cups of coffee.
"So what'd she do?" he asked as soon as the swooning waitress had withdrawn.
"Who?"
"Your sister. Sharon. What did she do when she learned she was pregnant?"
"Oh, she, uh…" Marnie lowered her eyes. "She wanted to have an abortion."
Across the table she sensed Law's reaction. His body got tense. She saw his hands form fists. It gratified her to know that Sharon's first option was as repugnant to Law as it had been to her. At least he hadn't been cavalier about it.
"Why didn't she?" he asked.
This was difficult for Marnie to discuss. It had been one of the most tumultuous times within her family. That's when it had begun to disintegrate. None of them had ever been the same after it.
"Sharon confided her plans to me," Marnie told him in a small voice. "One night after supper Sharon said she needed to talk to me. She told me she was pregnant. She was scared. That frightened me because I'd never seen her that disturbed over anything before.
"We stayed up all night, crying together, wondering what we should do. Tracking you down was out of the question. You were in the navy and, well, we didn't think you'd care to know. We didn't know what to do.
"But I couldn't believe that she wanted to get rid of it, dispose of it like garbage. I mean, it was a baby,
your
baby." She paused, glanced at him, then went on.
"I couldn't stand the thought of it. And I knew that Mother and Dad would rather have an illegitimate child than an abortion on their consciences."
"So you told them what she intended to do," he said.
"Yes. They forbade her to. She was furious with all of us. Her nine months of pregnancy weren't very joyous. But then David was born," she added with a wistful smile, "and we all loved him."
"Even Sharon?"
Her smile faltered. "She came to love him. He was so adorable and precocious, it was impossible not to."
He stared at her, sensing there was more to tell, but the arrival of their coffee spared her from having to elaborate. When the waitress withdrew, Law asked, "Why isn't David with Sharon now?"
"Sharon died." Wordlessly he stared at her. "When David was only four."
He took a sip of coffee. "How?"
"A car accident. My parents were devastated. Dad had a heart attack and died that same year. It's been just Mother, David, and me since then."
"That summer changed the course of your lives."
"I guess you could say that, yes," she agreed ruefully.
"That was a terrific summer for me. My folks wanted to treat me to a good time."
"I remember them. It was easy to see that they were very proud of you. You'd graduated at the top of your class. By the way congratulations on realizing your goal and becoming an astronaut."
"How did you know that was my goal?"
"You told me. One afternoon while Sharon was sunbathing, you and I took an inner tube out to ride the waves. You told me then that you were going to navy flight school to become a test pilot, then you wanted to apply for the astronaut program. I was so proud when I read in the newspaper that you'd been accepted. I felt like … well, like I knew you."
He was smiling, but suddenly his smile disappeared. "I hadn't thought about that summer in Galveston for years. Hell of a way to be reminded," he grumbled, signaling the waitress to refill their coffee cups.
Marnie took a careful sip of hers, still mindful of the watching eyes of the customers all around them.
"I always wear a rubber."
Scalding coffee sloshed over her hand, burning it and flooding the saucer. She gasped. "I beg your pardon?"
He calmly plucked two napkins from the dispenser on the table and used them to soak up the brown lake in her saucer. "Did you burn your hand?"
"It's fine," she lied, wondering if she dared ask the waitress for butter. She didn't have to. Law waved her over and asked for some.
"No, it's fine, really," Marnie protested when the waitress promptly returned with a plate bearing a slab of butter the size of Rhode Island for Law Kincaid's clumsy date who had spilled coffee on her hand.
"Thanks," he told the waitress with a smile meant to dismiss her.
"I can do it," Marnie said. "Really such a fuss over—"
"Give me your hand."
She stuck out her red, stinging hand. With two fingers he scooped up a glob of butter and smoothed it over the burn.
"Whenever I sleep with a woman, I use a condom," he said in a low voice. "Without fail."
His fingers slid between two of hers, smearing the creamy butter into the highly sensitive groove. Marnie nearly came off the booth's vinyl bench.
"The surgeon general would commend you."