Prodigal Son (29 page)

“Listen. If you need to talk, call me, okay?” Ethan said as he reached the doorstep.

“Sure. But I’m fine, really,” she lied.

His gaze searched her face, then he nodded. “Okay.”

She waited until he’d reached the elevator before she shut the door. Then she walked into her living room and stared at all the fertility-clinic paperwork and those damned stupid mens’ magazines she’d bought for Ethan.

The wanting-to-cry feeling hit her again and she closed her eyes.

All right, you big sook. Get it over and done with. Because this is the only chance you’re going to get to wallow in this.

She waited for the tears to come. Her throat got tight. Her chest ached. She gripped the couch—but her eyes remained steadfastly dry.

Okay.

Okay.

Moving slowly and carefully, she did a circuit of her apartment, collecting anything and everything to do with the fertility clinic and pregnancy and babies. She dumped the paperwork in a carton, to be taken down to the Dumpster in the basement next time she left the apartment. She hesitated over throwing the pregnancy books in.

She was still only thirty-eight, after all.

Hope springs eternal.

She wavered for half a second more. Then she dropped the books into the carton. She didn’t want anything hanging around to remind her of this debacle. It would be bad enough having to face Ethan at work every day with the memory of all of this sitting between them.

She pushed the carton close to the front door so she wouldn’t forget it when she went out. The sooner it was gone, the better.

Then she returned to her living room, sat on her couch and burst into noisy, messy tears.

Chapter Seven

S
he’d kicked him out. Amazing that after everything that had gone down this morning, the thing he couldn’t get past was that Alex hadn’t wanted him around once they’d made the mutual decision not to go through with their plans. She’d been disappointed, on the verge of tears, and she hadn’t wanted him to witness her moment of weakness. Because that was how Alex saw emotion and tears—as a weakness. A folly to be endured then brushed aside and ignored. He knew enough about her now to understand that.

If she’d let him stay, if she’d cried in front of him, he would have told her that tears didn’t make her less strong or less capable. He would have held her and talked to her and together they might have made sense of the roller-coaster ride they’d taken over the past few weeks.

Instead, she’d kicked him out and he was making bread at eleven in the morning, taking out his frustration and, yes, disappointment on the mass of dough under his hands.

Because he
was
disappointed, even though he knew they’d made the right decision. For a short while he’d convinced himself that he’d found a way to have what he wanted without the mess and entanglements and risk of a relationship. It had seemed like the perfect solution. Then reality had intruded.

He wanted more from parenthood. And so did Alex. When push came to shove, neither of them wanted to compromise.

Which left him…nowhere. His feelings hadn’t changed regarding marriage. And he’d rejected the alternate route to parenthood. All of which meant that it really was over for him.

He was never going to be a father.

Might as well let the fact seep into his bones, permanently this time. He’d have to make do with his brother’s children, be the best uncle he could be.

It wasn’t the end of the world. Disheartening, yes, but he’d get over it. Accept it. Move on. After all, he had a pretty good life.

The dough had lost its elasticity. He’d over-kneaded it. He stared at it for a long, silent minute. Then he gathered the big, floury lump and dropped it in the rubbish bin.

His thoughts shifted to Alex again as he started cleaning the counter. Had she allowed herself to cry once he’d left? Had she allowed herself even a small moment of humanity and frailty?

He dried his hands and glanced around his kitchen. He should go for a drive. Or maybe call his brother, see whether he wanted to hook up for lunch. Anything other than haunt his apartment, fixating on Alex and what had almost been between them.

He pulled out his phone and dialed. His brother picked up after the second ring.

“It’s me. You free for lunch?” Ethan said.

“I thought you had an appointment with a paper cup today.”

Ethan gazed out across the park. “We canceled the appointment. You free or not?”

“Who canceled? You or Alex?”

“It was a mutual decision.”

“What happened to wanting a kid?”

Ethan closed his eyes. What had he been thinking, calling his brother? He was only going to get the same grief he’d been getting for the past five years.

“You know what, forget I called.” He started to hang up.

“Wait. I’m sorry. I wasn’t having a go at you. I know how much you were banking on this.”

“It was a crazy idea.”

“Well, yeah. But it was a step in the right direction. You and Alex are closer now. You both know what each other wants—”

“Derek. I swear, you’ve got a one-track mind. Will you please give it a rest?”

“At least be honest with yourself. You have feelings for her, and all this stuff about a baby was your way of trying to smuggle them in under the radar.”

Ethan didn’t say anything for a long moment. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about Alex.”

Even if it had been a long time since he’d thought of her as simply a friend.

“So you’re going to let her walk away?”

Ethan thought about what Alex wanted and what he wanted.

“Yeah, I am.”

“Bullshit. You’ve never given up on anything you wanted in your life.”

There was so much confidence in his brother’s voice. He was so sure that all Ethan needed was to meet a good woman and he’d shrug off everything that had happened with Cassie and leap into the breach again.

Derek didn’t understand. But how could he when he didn’t know the full story? He knew only that Cassie had left, and that Ethan had not been interested in a reconciliation. They had never discussed the details because Ethan had never been able to reveal the full depth of his wife’s betrayal and rejection. He literally hadn’t been able to make himself form the words.

The day he’d come home from work and found Cassie waiting for him was etched like acid in his memory. She’d given him no reasons or explanations or warnings, she’d simply severed their marriage in the most brutal possible way. She’d sat there and told him she didn’t love him anymore. Then she’d told him about the baby. And then she’d walked, leaving him to try to make sense of what remained of his life.

For a long time, there hadn’t been a day that went by without him thinking about her, about what had gone wrong and how he hadn’t seen it coming. He still didn’t understand how he could have been so out of step with her. How he could have slept beside her every night and not known that she was quietly opening separate bank accounts and viewing apartments so that when she walked out the door she could step straight into her new life. Without him.

It hadn’t been a perfect marriage, but what marriage was? They’d had their differences and their rough patches. But he’d believed in her, trusted her, loved her implicitly.

And she’d shed him like an old skin and never looked back.

“Maybe we should have lunch another day,” Ethan said. “I’ll call you on the weekend or something, okay?”

He ended the call before his brother could object. The phone rang immediately and he let it go through to voice mail.

He didn’t need a pep talk or a lecture. He didn’t need his brother spouting the joys of marital and family life. He was happy for Derek and he loved Kay. He would lay down his life for Jamie or Tim. But he could not and would not go there again himself. What was that old saying?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

He wasn’t about to be fooled twice. No matter how much he was drawn to Alex. He may have toyed with the notion of intimacy over the past few weeks, but he didn’t have it in him to go there again.

He just…didn’t.

* * *

Alex flattened her fingers and stirred the tray of glass tiles in front of her. She needed another aqua tile—not bright blue or powder blue, but aqua blue. And if she’d used her last piece, she was going to seriously consider having a tantrum.

So much for mosaics as therapy. If anything, she was wound more tightly after an hour working on her latest project. She kept searching for an aqua tile, however, since the alternative was to wallow. And she’d done enough wallowing today. More even than when she and Jacob had finally gone their separate ways. More than at any other time in her adult life, in fact.

As always, it hadn’t made her feel any better. Her eyes were still puffy and swollen from crying and she felt completely flat, interested in nothing. She knew herself well enough to know the feeling would pass, but the long hours of the evening stretched ahead seemingly endlessly.

Get through tonight. Then you’ll have work tomorrow, and a week—okay, a month—from now you’ll be over it. Mostly.

For a moment she was overwhelmed by the task ahead. She let her shoulders slump. She didn’t want to play with mosaics. She didn’t want to do anything. She felt hollow and empty. She felt defeated.

After a long moment she took a deep breath and forced herself to sit up straight. She edged one of the tiles a little to the left and was reaching for her tile nippers just as a knock sounded on the door.

She paused, glancing down at herself. She was wearing a baggy old pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a stretchy tank top. Her hair was still damp from her shower this afternoon and she wasn’t wearing underwear or makeup.

She shrugged. There was only one person it could be, since the intercom hadn’t buzzed to announce a visitor. It had been a month since she’d last caught up with Helen, her friend from the apartment across the hall. Having company tonight could only be a good thing—provided it was the right kind of company. By which she meant the kind that didn’t know anything about her now-defunct baby plans and therefore wouldn’t ask probing personal questions. Alex didn’t want to be probed or questioned tonight. She simply wanted to process and grieve. And since she hadn’t confided in anyone apart from Ethan, she figured she was safe.

She walked to the front door, rubbing her gummy fingertips together to try to remove some of the adhesive residue. She opened the front door—and discovered the wrong sort of company standing on her doorstep.

“Ethan.”

For a moment she simply stood there, blinking stupidly. She should have known it would be him. Why hadn’t she checked through the spy hole before opening the door?

“Hey. I brought you dinner,” he said, hefting a heavy-looking recyclable shopping bag.

“Dinner…?”

He brushed past her and into her apartment. “Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, baby peas, homemade gravy. And a bottle of sémillon sauvignon. You want to eat out here or in the kitchen?”

He was already heading for the kitchen before she could respond. She chased after him, belatedly dragging the low-slung waistband of her pajama bottoms up to meet the hem of her tank top. She was very aware that she wasn’t wearing panties or a bra and that it had been a long time since she’d considered herself fit for public consumption without either. But she could hardly race off to her bedroom to put underwear on while he made free with her apartment.

Then she remembered something else—her mosaic project was spread out across the kitchen table. No one ever saw her mosaics, for good reason.

She swore under her breath and lengthened her stride. She skidded to a halt in the kitchen doorway. Ethan had left his shopping bag on the counter and was hovering over the table, examining her handiwork.

Too late. Damn.

“It’s not finished yet,” she said quickly.

“It’s a tabletop, right?” he asked, glancing at her over his shoulder.

His gaze dipped briefly below her neck and she crossed her arms over her braless breasts.

“Yes. A side table. I found it at a secondhand shop.”

“And this round thing at the top is a flower, right?”

“A daisy.”

“And this is a rose. And that’s a daffodil,” he said.

They were pretty good guesses considering how un-rose-and un-daffodil-like her representations were. She was well aware that they looked more like clumps of ceramic confetti than anything else.

“That’s right.”

“It’s good—”

“Don’t. Don’t lie and tell me it’s good. It’s terrible. I know it’s terrible. That’s why I don’t show my mosaics to anyone. It doesn’t matter if they’re terrible or not when I’m the only one who sees them. So you don’t need to butter me up by saying something nice when we both know it’s not true.”

Ethan’s mouth curled up at the corner. “Are you finished?”

She let her breath out, aware she’d overreacted a little. “Yes.”

“I was going to say it’s good you put a cloth down because your glue’s leaking.”

“Oh. Right.”

She joined him at the table and saw that the tube of tile adhesive was adrift in a sea of ooze.

“Damn.”

“Where do you keep your paper towel?” he asked.

“Under the sink.”

She shifted her tray of tiles and her tool kit to the floor, then lifted the half-finished tabletop and leaned it against the wall. When she turned around again Ethan was wiping the adhesive off her drop sheet with a wad of paper.

“Thanks,” she said. “And sorry about the rant.”

Ethan handed her the wad of paper towel. “It was a pretty good one, as rants go. And for the record, the tabletop isn’t that bad.”

She gave him a look. “It’s not that good, either.”

He grinned. “True. But it didn’t make me want to poke out my eyes, so there’s something to be said for that.”

Sometimes she forgot how completely devastating he could be when he smiled. She swallowed, the sound audible.

“I’ll get some plates. And I need to wash my hands…”

“Point me in the right direction and I’ll serve while you go clean up.”

She was quick to take him up on the offer, scuttling off to her bedroom at the speed of light. She degummed her hands in record time, then scrambled into underwear and a T-shirt and jeans.

She had no idea why Ethan was here, or why he’d brought her dinner, of all things. Their baby bargain was over. There was no reason for him to be here.

Unless he felt sorry for her?

She was brushing her hair when the thought occurred and she stilled with the brush midstroke.

Was that why he was here? Because he was worried poor childless Alex would lose it without close supervision? Had he imagined her huddled on the couch, elbow-deep in a bucket of ice cream and ridden to the rescue, the way he had so many times since this all started?

She threw her brush onto the bed. If that was the case, if she detected even a whiff of pity coming off of him, she was going to tell him in no uncertain terms what he could do with his chicken and all the trimmings.

And if it wasn’t the case… She had no idea why he was here. Hadn’t they said everything they needed to say to each other this morning? And weren’t they going to see each other tomorrow at work?

There was one other reason he could be here, of course. But he’d made his feelings about settling down pretty clear—as had she. Only a very silly woman would allow herself to buy into the fantasy that he’d somehow had a change of heart since getting to know her.

He was pulling a plastic tub of gravy out of her microwave when she returned to the kitchen. His gaze raked her from head to toe but he didn’t say anything about her quick-change routine.

“I couldn’t find your bottle opener,” he said.

She crossed to the fridge and pulled one of her own bottles from the built-in wine rack.