“Sure,” Cait said. “Let’s go upstairs. You can tell me why Ashley Jantz hasn’t run you down with her Corvette.”
Richard turned to Molly. “A kid drives a Corvette?”
“Daddy is a big-time contractor and loaded.”
“Jantz?” He stared at his son. “You’ve been messing with Gordon Jantz’s daughter?”
“I wasn’t messing with her!”
“Yes, you were,” muttered Cait.
“Aargh!”
“Shoo,” Molly told them, flapping her hands.
They went. The argument rose in volume until it was finally cut off upstairs by the bedroom door.
“He’s in deep shit,” Richard remarked, picking up the turkey platter and serving bowl.
“Good,” Molly snapped.
“What?” He followed her to the kitchen.
Fired up herself, she set the pile of plates on the counter and faced him. “You don’t want our children to have a big romance at this point, do you? Why don’t you think that one through?”
He did, with commendable speed. “You’re right. I don’t. I want to have a romance with you, and something tells me the two relationships aren’t compatible.”
“You think?” She huffed and went back for more dishes.
He did the same. “Molly, I never said I wanted them to get back together. God. What I’d like is to see my son behave honorably. Support Cait. Not make sure she sees him with his hands all over some other girl only because he wants to hurt her feelings. That’s all I meant.”
Her shoulders sagged as she dropped a handful of silverware in the sink. “I’m sorry. I do see that. Listening to them, I had this horrible vision of them running off to get married, drugged by young love.”
“Is that what you did?” he asked gently, and the next moment he’d set down his own load and put his hands on her shoulders. When he turned her to face him, his eyes were warm and understanding.
“Yes.” Why was she nearly hyperventilating? “No. Oh, I suppose I thought I was in love. Colt was older, sexy, charismatic.... But mostly, I was pregnant. And I wanted a family.”
It was as simple as that, she realized in a kind of horror. She had so desperately wanted something she’d lost. Even though she’d had a huge crush, for want of a better word, on Colt, she wasn’t thinking marriage and forever…until she got pregnant. And then, suddenly, there it was—a shimmering possibility. And she’d grabbed at it. A dream.
Studying Richard’s face with sudden intensity, Molly couldn’t help wondering. She’d said to him, I’ve been dreaming, too. Was that what this was? Whatever she felt for him? A fantasy, and not real at all? An image of them all as a family?
“What are you thinking?” he asked, searching her face with equal intensity.
“I’m panicking,” she whispered.
He tugged her closer. “Don’t. Not about us. Damn it, Molly! We have lives separate from our kids. We have a right to have lives of our own. Don’t mix all of this into one stew.”
But she couldn’t help seeing with extraordinary clarity that Cait’s and Trevor’s problems were too interconnected to separate from anything she and Richard tried to build. Unless he was talking about sex and only sex. An affair they could somehow keep separate from their children.
How could they? This was a small town. Sneaking around seemed sordid. She realized she’d hate it if he suggested a night away at a motel or something like that.
But I want him, she all but wailed. I do. Why can’t I have him?
Maybe…maybe they’d have to wait, at least until Trevor had left home. They were adults. It wouldn’t kill them to wait a few months.
Yes, but what if Trevor didn’t leave for college until next September? That was ten months away. Worse yet, what if he went to college locally, maybe even continued to live with his dad?
No matter what, by then I will be grieving the loss of Cait’s child, Molly thought bleakly. And along with this baby, everything else I’ve ever lost, or known I couldn’t have.
I am pathetic.
What had he said? We’ll work it out. Her rejoinder: But not necessarily well.
But maybe their time would come. Or maybe with time she’d realize she didn’t want this—whatever it was—to amount to anything.
Right now, though, she gazed into those extraordinarily dark eyes and feared, terribly, that she’d fallen in love with this man, and that their time wouldn’t come, because too much was in their way. And, dear God, she felt selfish even thinking that, when she’d just renewed her resolve that Cait would come first.
* * *