The Divorcee Said Yes!

Deb nodded. “What kind of parties did you throw?”

“Outdoor parties, mostly.”

“So?” Deb made a face. “Big deal.”

Annie’s lips twitched. “Well, it was wintertime.”

“Wintertime?”

“Yes. See, the thing was, the house was so small, the mice pretty much ran it. And—”

“Mice?”

Annie sank down on the chair again. “It wasn’t much of a house, but then, we didn’t have much money. I’d just graduated from high school and the only job I could find was at the local Burger King. Chase had transferred to City College. The tuition was lots cheaper and besides, that way he could work construction jobs for his father a couple of days a week.” She sighed. “We were dead broke. Believe me, we found a million ways to save money!”

Deb smiled. “Including having parties outdoors in midwinter.”

Annie smiled, too. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad. We’d build a fire in a barbecue in the backyard, you know? And I’d make tons and tons of chili and homemade bread. We’d put on a huge pot of coffee, and there’d be beer for the guys...”

Her voice drifted away.

“A far cry from today,” Deb said. She reached for the champagne bottle and refilled both their glasses. “Bubbly, caviar, shrimp on ice, boneless beef with mushrooms...”

“Filet de Boeuf Aux Chanterelles, if you please,” Annie said archly.

Deb grinned. “Pardonnez-moi, madam.”

“No joke. Considering what that stuff cost, you’d better remember to give it its French name.”

“And you didn’t let Chase pay a dime, huh?”

“No,” Annie said sharply.

“I still think you’re nuts. What’re you trying to prove, anyway?”

“That I don’t need his money.”

“Or him?” Deb said softly. Annie looked at her and Deb shrugged. “I saw you guys on the dance floor. Things looked pretty cozy, for a while there.”

“You saw the past worm its way into the present. Trust me, Deb. That part of my life is over. I don’t feel a thing for Chase. I can’t quite believe I ever did.”

“I understand. A nostalgia trip, hmm?”

“Exactly. Brought on by my little girl’s wedding...” Annie paused, swallowed hard and suddenly burst into tears.

“Oh, sweetie.” Deb jumped from the couch and squatted down beside Annie. She wrapped her arms around her and patted her back. “Honey, don’t cry. It’s not so unusual to still have a thing going for your ex, you know. Especially when he’s hunky, the way Chase is.”

“He’s getting married,” Annie sobbed.

“Chase?”

“To Janet Pendleton.”

“Am I supposed to know her?”

“I hope not.” Annie hiccuped. “She’s rich. Gorgeous. Smart.”

“I hate her already.” Deb put her hand under Annie’s chin and urged it to rise. “Are you sure?”

“He told me so.” Annie sat back, dug a hanky out of her cleavage where she’d stuffed it after the ceremony and blew her nose. “So I told him I’m marrying Milton.”

“Milton? As in, Milton Hoffman?” Deb rocked back on her heels. “My God, you wouldn’t!”

“Why not? He’s single, he’s dependable and he’s nice.”

“So is a teddy bear,” Deb said in horror. “Better you should take one of those to bed than Milton Hoffman.”

“Oh, Deb, that’s not fair.” Annie got to her feet. “There’s more to a relationship than sex.”

“Name it.”

“Companionship, for one thing. Similar interests. Shared dreams.”

“And you can have enough of those things with Milton to make you forget all the rest?”

“Yes!” Annie’s shoulders slumped. “No,” she admitted. “Isn’t that awful? I like Milton, but I don’t love him.”

Deb heaved a sigh as she stood up. “Thank you, God. For a minute there, I thought you’d gone around the bend.”

“Not only am I sex-obsessed—”

“You’re not. Sex is a big part of life.”

“—but I’ve used poor Milton badly. Now I’ve got to call him up and tell him I didn’t mean it when I introduced him to Chase as my fiancé.”

“Wow,” Deb said softly. “You certainly have had a busy day.”

“A messy day, is what you mean.”

“Don’t kill me for saying this, but maybe you should rethink things. I mean, I know he’s getting married and all, but maybe you do still have a thing for your ex.”

“I wouldn’t care if he were living in a monastery!” Annie’s eyes flashed. “I do not have a ‘thing’ for Chase. I admit, I’m upset, but it’s because my baby’s gotten herself married.”

“You know what they say, Annie. We only raise children to let go of them once they grow up.”

Annie tucked the hanky back into her cleavage, picked up the champagne bottle and headed for the kitchen.

“It’s not letting go of her that upsets me, Deb. It’s that she’s so young. Too young, I’m afraid, to make such a commitment.”

“Well,” Deb said, folding her arms and leaning against the door frame, “you were young when you got hitched, too.”

Annie sighed. “Exactly. And look where it led me. I thought I knew what I was doing but it turned out I didn’t. It was hormones, not intelligence, that—” The phone rang. She reached out and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Annie?”

“Chase.” Annie’s mouth narrowed. “What do you want? I thought we said all we needed to say to each other this afternoon.”

Across town, in his hotel room, Chase looked at the boy standing at the window. The boy’s shoulders were slumped and his head was bowed in classic despair.

Chase cleared his throat.

“Annie... Nick is here.”

Annie’s brows knotted together. “Nick? There? Where do you mean, there?”

“I mean he’s here, in my room at the Hilton.”

“No. That’s impossible. Nick is on a plane to Hawaii, with Dawn...” The blood drained from Annie’s face. “Oh God,” she whispered. “Has there been an accident? Is Dawn—”

“No,” Chase said quickly. “Dawn’s fine. Nothing’s happened to her, or to Nick.”

“Then why—”

“She left him.”

Annie sank down into a chair at the kitchen table. “She left him?” she repeated stupidly. Deb stared at her in disbelief. “Dawn left Nick?”

“Yeah.” Chase rubbed the back of his neck, where the muscles felt as if somebody were tightening them on a rack. “They, uh, they got to the airport and checked in their luggage. Then they went to the VIP lounge. I upgraded their tickets, Annie, and bought them a membership in the lounge. I knew you wouldn’t approve, but—”

“Dammit, Chase, tell me what happened!”

Chase sighed. “Nick said he’d get them some coffee. Dawn said that was fine. But when he came back with the coffee, she was gone.”

“She didn’t leave him,” Annie said, her hand at her heart, “she’s been kidnapped!”

“Kidnapped?” Deb snapped. “Dawn?”

“Did you call the police? Did you—”

“She left a note,” Chase said wearily. Annie heard the rustle of paper. “She says it’s not that she doesn’t care for him.”

“Care for him?” Annie’s voice rose. “People care for—for flowers. Or parakeets. She said she loved Nick. That she was crazy about him.”

“...not that she doesn’t care for him,” Chase continued, “but that loving him isn’t enough.”

“Isn‘t—?”

“Isn’t enough. She says she has no choice but to end this marriage before it begins.”

Annie put her hand over her eyes. “Oh God,” she whispered. “That sounds so ominous.”

Chase nodded, as if Annie could see him.

“Nick’s beside himself, and so am I.” His voice roughened with emotion. “He’s looked for her everywhere, but he can’t find her. Dear God, If anything’s happened to our little girl...”

Annie’s head lifted. As soft as a whisper, the front door opened, then closed. Footsteps came slowly down the hall.

“Mom?”

Dawn stood in the doorway, dressed in the going-away suit they’d bought together, the corsage of baby orchids Annie had pinned on the jacket’s lapel sadly drooping. Dawn’s eyes were red and swollen.

“Baby?” Annie whispered.

Dawn gave Annie a smile that trembled, and then a sob burst from her throat.

“Oh, Mommy,” she wailed, and Annie dropped the phone and opened her arms. Her daughter flew across the room and buried her face in her mother’s lap.

Deb picked the phone up from the floor.

“Chase?”

“Dammit to hell,” Chase roared, “who is this? What’s going on there?”

“I’m a friend of Annie’s,” Deb said. “You and Nick can stop worrying. Dawn’s here. She just came in.”

Chase flashed an okay sign to Nick, who hurried to his side.

“Is my daughter okay?”

“Yes. She seems to—”

Chase slammed down the phone, and he and Nick ran out the door.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MOON HAD RISEN, climbed into a bank of clouds, and disappeared.

Sighing, Chase switched on the lamp beside his chair and wished he could pull a stunt like that. Maybe then people would stop looking at him as if he might just come up with a solution to an impossible situation.

But the simple truth was that impossible situations required improbable solutions, and he didn’t have any. His mind was a blank. At this point, he wasn’t even sure what day it was. The only thing he knew for certain was that a few hours ago, he’d been the father of—the bride. Now he was the father of—what did you call a young woman who’d gotten to the airport and then told her brand-new husband that they’d made an awful mistake and she wanted out?

Smart. That was what Chase would have called her, twenty-four hours ago, when he’d have given just about anything if Dawn had decided to put her wedding off until she was older and, hopefully, wiser.

Chase closed his eyes wearily. But his daughter hadn’t decided to put off her wedding. She’d gone through with it, which put a different spin on things. More than canceling arrangements with the church and the caterer were involved here. Dawn and Nick were bound together, in the eyes of God and in accordance with the laws of the state of Connecticut.

Severing that bond was a lot more complicated than it would have been a few hours ago. And it sure didn’t help that Dawn kept weeping and saying she loved Nick with all her heart, it was just that she couldn’t, wouldn’t, mustn’t stay married to him.

Chase put his hand to the back of his neck and tried to rub the tension out of his muscles. He had no idea what she was talking about, and neither did Nick, the poor, bewildered bastard. Not even Annie understood; Chase was certain of that, and never mind the way she’d kept saying, “I understand, sweetheart,” while she’d rocked Dawn in her arms.

“What do you understand?” Chase had asked her in exasperation, when she’d come hurrying out of the bedroom after she’d finally convinced Dawn to lie down and try to get some sleep. Annie had shot him one of those men-are-so-stupid looks women did so well and said she didn’t understand anything, but she wasn’t about to upset Dawn by telling her that.

“Dammit, Annie,” Chase had roared, and that had done it. Nick had come running, Dawn had started crying, Annie had called him a name he hadn’t even figured she knew...hell, he thought wearily, it was a good thing Annie didn’t have a dog, or it would have gotten in on the act and taken a chunk out of his ankle.

“Now see what you’ve done,” Annie had snarled, and the door to Dawn’s room had slammed in his bewildered face.

Chase groaned. He was tired. So tired. There’d been no sound from behind the closed door for hours now. Annie and his daughter were probably asleep. Even Nick had finally fallen into exhausted slumber on the sofa in the living room.

Maybe, if he just put his head back for a five-minute snooze...

“Dammit!”

Chase’s head bobbed like a yo-yo on a string. That was just what he’d needed, all right. Oh, yeah. Nothing like a little whiplash for neck muscles that already felt knotted.

“Stupid chair,” he muttered, and sprang to his feet.

For a minute there, he’d forgotten he wasn’t in the den he and Annie had shared for so many years. Annie had dumped all the old furniture when she’d bought this house. She’d filled these rooms with little bits and pieces of junk. Antiques, she called them, but junk is what the stuff was. Delicate junk, at that. Sofas and tables with silly legs, chairs with no headrests...

“You kick that chair, Chase Cooper, and I swear, I’ll kick you!”

Chase swung around. His ex-wife stood in the entrance to the room. She’d exchanged her mother-of-the-bride dress for a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and from the way her hair was standing on end and her hands were propped on her hips, he had the feeling her mood wasn’t much better than his.

Too bad. Too damned bad, considering that she was the one had gotten them into this mess in the first place. If only she hadn’t been so damned permissive. If only she’d put her foot down right at the start, told Dawn she was too young to get married—

“It deserves kicking,” he grumbled, but he stepped aside and let her swish past him, snatch up the chair cushions and plump them, as if that might remove any sign he’d sat there. “How’s Dawn?”

“She’s asleep.” Annie tucked the cushions back in place. “How’s Nick? I assume he’s still here?”

“Yes, he’s here. He’s asleep, in the living room.”

“And he’s okay?”

“As okay as he can be, all things considered. Has our daughter told you yet just what, exactly, is going on?”

Annie looked at him. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing the curls back from her face.

“How about some tea?” Without waiting for his answer, she set off for the kitchen. “Unless you’d prefer coffee,” she asked, switching on the overhead fluorescent light.

“Tea’s fine,” Chase said, blinking in the sudden glare. He sank onto one of the stools that stood before the kitchen counter, watching as Annie filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove. “Has she?”

“Has she what?” Annie yanked open the pantry door. She took out a box of tea bags and put it on the counter. “Would you like a cookie? Of course, I don’t have those hideous things you always preferred, with all that goo in the middle.”

“Just tea,” he replied, refusing to rise to the bait. “What did Dawn say?”

Annie shut the pantry door and opened the refrigerator. “How about a sandwich? Swiss? Or there’s some ham, if you prefer.”

“Annie...”

“You’d have to take it on whole grain bread, though, the kind you always said—”

“—that I wouldn’t touch until somebody strapped a feed bag over my face and a saddle on my back. No, thank you very much, I don’t want a sandwich. I don’t want anything, except to know what our daughter told you and what it is you don’t want to tell me.” Chase’s eyes narrowed. “Has Nick mistreated her?”

“No, of course not.” Annie shut the refrigerator door. The kettle had begun to hiss, and she grabbed for it before it could whistle. “Hand me a couple of mugs, would you? They’re in that cupboard, right beside you.”

“He doesn’t seem the type who would.” Chase grabbed two white china mugs and slid them down the counter to Annie. “But if he’s so much as hurt a hair on our daughter’s head, so help me—”

“Will you please calm down? I’m telling you, it isn’t that. Nick’s a sweetheart.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

Annie looked at him, then away. “It’s, ah, it’s complicated.”

“Complicated?” Chase’s eyes narrowed again. “It’s not—the boy isn’t...”

“Isn’t what? Do you still take two sugars, or have you finally learned to lay off the stuff?”

“Two sugars, and stop nagging.”

Annie dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into her ex’s tea, and stirred briskly.

“You’re right. You can wallow in sugar, for all I care. Your health isn’t my problem anymore, it’s hers.”

“Hers?”

“Janet Pendleton.”

“Janet Pen...” He flushed. “Oh. Her.”

Annie slapped the mug of tea in front of him, hard enough so some of the hot amber liquid sloshed over the rim and onto his fingers.

“That’s right. Let your fiancée worry about your weight.”

“Nobody’s got to worry about my weight,” Chase said, surreptitiously sucking in his gut.

He was right, Annie thought sourly, as she slid onto the stool next to his. Nobody did. He was still as solid-looking and handsome as he’d been the day they’d married—or the day they’d divorced. Another benefit of being male. Men didn’t have to see the awful changes that came along, as you stood at top of the yawning chasm that was middle age. The numbers that began to creep upward on your bathroom scale. The flesh that began to creep downward. The wrinkles that Janet Pendleton didn’t have. The sags Chase’s cute little secretary hadn’t had, either.

“...make him normal. That’s not what happened with Dawn and Nick, is it?”

Annie frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Reality, that’s what. I was telling you that I just heard about this guy, married a girl even though he knew he was a switch hitter, hoping that having a wife would make him normal—”

Annie choked over her tea. “Good grief,” she said, when she could speak, “you are such a pathetic mate stereotype, Chase Cooper! No, Nicholas is not, as you so delicately put it, a ‘switch hitter.”’

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well, it might not hurt to ask.”

“Nick and Dawn have been living together, the past three months. And Dawn hasn’t so much as hinted at any problem in bed. Quite the contrary.” Annie blushed. “I dropped in a couple of times—not in the morning, or late at night, you understand—and I could pretty much tell, from the time it took them to get to the door and the way they looked, that things were perfectly fine in that department.” She looked down at her tea. “I don’t drop by without calling first, anymore.”

“What do you mean, they’ve been living together?”

“Just what I said. Didn’t Dawn tell you? They took an apartment, in Cannondale.”

“Dammit, Annie, how could you permit our daughter to do that?”

“To do what? Move in with the man she was going to marry?”

“Didn’t you tell her no?”

“She’s eighteen, Chase. Legally of age. Old enough to make her own choices.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?”

“You could have told her it was wrong.”

“Love is never wrong.”

“Love,” Chase said, and shook his head. “Sex, is more like it.”

“I asked her to take her time and think it through, to be sure she was doing the right thing. She said she’d done that, and that she was.”

“Sex,” Chase said again.

Annie sighed. “Sex, love...they go together.”

“Yeah, well, they could have had the one and still waited for the other, until after the wedding.” Chase glowered into his tea. “But I suppose that’s too old-fashioned.”

“It was, for us.”

Chase looked up sharply. Color swept into his face. “What we did, or didn’t do, has nothing to do with this situation.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.