When Love Walks In

“Dean did that…didn’t he?” she exclaimed, demanding a closer look.

Brenda’s take-charge expression crumpled. “He didn’t just go, the other night,” she confessed. “He hit me first.”

By now, dusk was falling, causing the exterior windows at the far end of the office to blacken and reflect the room. Putting aside her own tangle of emotions, Cate focused on her friend’s safety and well-being.

“If he threatens you again, I want you to call me,” she insisted. “I’ll come over, even if it’s two o’clock in the morning. If necessary, call the police. I’m not afraid of Dean and his threats. And I’m not intimidated by the fact that he’s a sheriff’s deputy. In my opinion, he’s the kind of coward who’ll back off if there’s a witness present.”

At the same time as Cate was locking up the school office and walking Brenda to her car, Danny was seated on the front porch of his grandmother’s house, stirring its dilapidated wooden swing with one desultory foot. He hadn’t been “home,” if he could call it that, for almost seventeen years. Ignoring the emblem of his most recent promotion, a shiny black Infiniti he’d parked in the weed-choked drive, he sipped at a beer, turned his gaze inward and tried to deal with his ghosts.

The only one who still mattered to him was Cate. In truth, he’d volunteered for the Beckwith Tool and Die assignment out of a gnawing wish to see her again. As he’d driven down from Chicago via Interstates 65 and 74, exiting onto Ohio Route 32 at Mount Carmel, just east of Cincinnati, he’d let memories he’d tried to bury for years resurface and catch him by the throat.

Accepting the pain they’d brought, he’d allowed himself to remember the sound of her laughter. Her inherent kindness. The delicious warmth of her as she’d nestled close. She’d been the best thing in his life. In point of fact, the only thing. Losing her as they’d stood poised on the brink of having a life together had scooped the heart right out of him.

Why’d she leave the Clermont County Jail that night without even glancing in my direction, he asked himself for perhaps the thousandth time as the swing creaked softly with his movements. Sure…her parents had her by the scruff of the neck. She was their prisoner, in effect. And we were in a very humiliating situation. Yet she could have looked at me. Let me know without saying a word that the setback to our plans was only temporary.

The way things had turned out, it hadn’t been, of course. They hadn’t set eyes on each other again.

As the moon rose, gilding the saplings and weeds that choked the overgrown property he’d inherited, he found himself asking the same old questions. First and foremost, he wanted to know why Cate hadn’t answered his letters. Clearly, she’d gotten them. Signed in her familiar handwriting, the annulment papers had reached him at his new address.

Painful as her silence had been, neither it nor the arrival of the annulment notice had overthrown his hopes. She was underage and her parents were calling the shots. He would simply wait them out—return to Beckwith for her on her eighteenth birthday.

A phone conversation with his grandmother two months after his departure had changed his plans. When he’d asked about Cate, the old woman had responded that she’d married Larry Anderson, a Beckwith High School graduate several years Danny’s senior, who’d worked full-time in her father’s store. Following the ceremony, she’d added, Cate and her new husband had left for Minneapolis.

“You mean they’re—” he’d choked off the words “on their honeymoon.”

“Supposedly the Anderson boy got himself a job up there,” Geraldine Finn had answered sourly.

For Danny the news had been like a kick in the stomach. Initially his mind had refused to register it. Cate…married…to Larry? he’d thought in disbelief. It’s only been a few months since we spoke our marriage vows!

True, the towheaded former basketball player for Beckwith High had always had a thing for Cate. Secure in her love, Danny hadn’t minded. He doubted if she’d even realized it. For one thing she’d hardly ever talked to him—just murmured the kind of pleasantries people do when their only connection is the fact that one of them works for the other’s parents.

She can’t possibly love him, he’d told himself. Not so soon after me. There has to be some mistake. The thought of another man touching her had made him want to go ballistic.

A mean-spirited comment from his grandmother had only made matters worse. “Good riddance if you ask me,” she’d observed when he didn’t speak. “You’ll find somebody else. The girl’s like her parents…thinks she’s too fine for the likes of us.”

If so, he’d never seen any sign of it.

Cutting the call short, he’d punched a fist through one of the flimsy walls in his shabby Chicago apartment as he’d sought an explanation. And failed to come up with one. Cate was still underage, still a senior in high school. He couldn’t imagine her parents letting her drop out to marry anyone, not even Larry with his sterling reputation. They’d wanted her to attend college, be somebody.

Unless…unless…

What if she’s pregnant, he’d thought suddenly, and doesn’t know how to find me? That she accepted Larry’s proposal out of desperation?

They’d been so careful…only slipped up once. Somehow he’d forced himself to calm down and phone Terry Pobanz, one of his high school buddies.

The affable Terry had sounded as puzzled as he felt. “Nobody around here gets it,” he’d admitted. “They never dated. Then suddenly they’re married and headed for Minneapolis. I always thought you guys…”

“Yeah,” Danny had replied gruffly. “So did I. They didn’t…have to, did they? Get married, I mean.”

Terry’s surprise at the question had echoed in his voice. “Not that I know of,” he’d answered. “I haven’t heard anything like that.”

Bidding Terry goodbye before his friend could ask too many painful questions, Danny had buried his face in his hands. The following day he’d grimly set about making a separate life for himself.

To his surprise he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, at least in a business sense. He had a penthouse apartment on Lake Shore Drive now, though no one permanent to share it with him. Stocks, bonds and an amazing sum of money in the bank. A top-notch salary complete with profit sharing. Already the promotion that had occasioned his purchase of the Infiniti was ancient history. Shortly before he’d left for Beckwith, Mercator’s CEO had invited him into the company’s inner sanctum and offered him an even juicier plum. When he returned to Chicago, he would put his penthouse up for sale and head for Northern California, to plan, build and take control of a stunning new Mercator complex. It was slated to become the company’s headquarters west of the Mississippi. And he’d be in charge of it. Henceforth, he’d be a Mercator vice president.

There’d been women in his life, of course. But no one he’d wanted to marry. The truth was, he’d never met anyone who could take Cate’s place in his heart. Maybe seeing her again will set me free, he thought, bending his empty beer can double. Maybe she’ll seem ordinary to me now. I’ll be able to get on with things. Marry and father a couple of fresh-faced kids. Have the kind of happy, close-knit family you see in TV commercials.

He couldn’t make himself believe it, though. For one thing, he’d learned from a former classmate he’d run into last month in the men’s department at Marshall Field’s that Cate had been a widow for several years. She and her fifteen-year-old son were living in Beckwith. The most elementary of calculations had told him the boy wasn’t his.

The practical man in him knew that attempting to take up where he’d left off with her could mean setting himself up for a fall. For one thing, she might have a new man in her life. For another, her son might object to him. It was anybody’s guess what, if anything, he’d been told about his mother’s past. It went without saying that her parents would be against it.

He hadn’t volunteered for the assignment in Beckwith just to worry about what the McDonoughs might prefer. He wanted to see her, dammit. Find out if there were any embers. Ask why she hadn’t written to him. If he didn’t avail himself of the chance, the kind of personal life he wanted would continue to elude him. He would just keep asking the same old questions. Once and for all, something had to be resolved with Cate.

I wonder if I should call her, he thought. Or let fate decide whether or not we bump into each other. Phoning didn’t seem like a viable option. For one thing, he might get the boy.

And if she said hello? What would he say then? It would kill him if she hung up on him.

Bidding Brenda goodbye in the school parking lot, Cate dropped off the fliers at the home of the Save Our Town Committee chairman and ran by her in-laws’ place with some secondhand paperback novels she’d collected for Larry’s father. A once-robust man who was now a shadow of his former self, Russ Anderson spent most of his time these days in a wheelchair in front of the television set. The family breadwinner, his wife, Beverly, wasn’t home yet. According to Russ, she’d gone to the bank to cash her paycheck and on to Clingers’ for the week’s groceries.

His welcoming hug and usual question, “How’s that grandson of ours?” swam guiltily in Cate’s thoughts alongside fevered imaginings of what it would be like to see Danny again as she drove home.

Dressed in his newest baggy jeans and favorite leather jacket, Brian was waiting for her when she walked in the door.

“Hi, Mom,” he greeted her with his most appealing grin. “I was wondering if, um, you could let me have a couple of bucks. Shawn and Bill want me to go with them to Ryersville for pizza.”

Even before she’d learned he was back in town, Cate had begun to see Danny in Brian every time she looked at her son. They had the same blue eyes, identical heart-tugging grins. The baggy, in-style clothes, the modest earring Brian had started sporting in one ear and the longish, bleached-blond thatch that sat atop his neatly cropped, naturally dark hair like an overturned bowl did little to hide his resemblance to the man who—without knowing it—had cooperated in giving life to him.

Neither Brian nor his natural father knew of the other’s existence. For her son, Cate realized, the word Dad conjured up the memory of quiet, sweet-natured Larry Anderson, who’d worked full-time in her father’s store at the time of his conception. Friendly but diffident whenever she’d come in, Larry hadn’t given any sign he might be interested in her. At least, none that she’d noticed. Of course, he’d told her later that she hadn’t been paying attention. Whatever the case, she’d been amazed when he’d stepped forward, offering himself as a substitute husband and father after overhearing her parents discuss the “fix” she was in.

“Don’t you have any homework?” she asked, her thoughts split between Brian’s request and the dark-haired man from her past who, at that very moment, was somewhere in Beckwith.

Brian rolled his eyes. “It’s Friday night, Mom. Get real. I’ve got all weekend to do that stuff.”

She decided not to call him on a response that felt a tad disrespectful to her. “Well, what happened to your allowance?” she asked instead. “I gave it to you early…on Wednesday. Remember?”

He had the grace to squirm a little. “I guess you could say I spent it.”

“On what?”

“CDs, if you must know.”

“No more heavy metal, I hope.”

If so, he didn’t own up to it. “I’ve been using my earphones the way you asked me to,” he pointed out. “Can I have the money?”

Danny’s proximity kept whispering in her ear. “How much do you need?” she asked.

“Eight dollars ought to be enough.”

Cate supposed it wouldn’t break the family bank. At age sixteen—fifteen according to what he believed and what the doctored copy of the birth certificate in his official school records proclaimed—Brian was three-quarters grown and getting restless with maternal constraints. Still, he was basically a good kid. To date, unlike some of his classmates, he’d managed to keep out of trouble.

“Who’s driving?” she asked.

“Billy. Shawn’s mother needed the car this evening. The guys are gonna leave without me if I don’t get a move on. Say yes.”

Billy Burnett and Shawn Randazzo were both seniors, whereas Brian was a lowly sophomore. They’d begun to include him in their extra-curricular activities when he was picked for the varsity football team. Of the two boys, Billy was the most conscientious, not to mention the better driver.

About to lecture him about the need to do a few odd jobs if he wanted spending money over and above his allowance, Cate held her tongue. Won over by his patience and her strong love for him, she dug in her purse. The five and three crumpled ones she handed him would have to be deducted from the grocery money. “Behave yourself, okay?” she said. “You’re a varsity athlete now. A model for younger kids, with a reputation to uphold.”

The admonition was a compliment in disguise and Brian seemed to sense it. “Thanks, Mom,” he said, shoving the money into his pocket. His buddies hadn’t arrived yet and, abruptly, awkwardly, he planted a kiss on her cheek.

Thoughts of Danny, his calloused but exquisitely sensuous fingertips caressing her skin, his heated kisses, swarmed like bees around Cate’s head as she made her way into the kitchen and heated a can of tomato soup. Part of me can’t help but hope against hope that he’s carrying a torch for me, she thought as she ate it, even if it might set off a chain reaction that could spiral out of control. Yet she guessed the likelihood of that happening was practically nonexistent. He’d have phoned after Larry died if he still had feelings for me, she thought. I’ll bet any given time he has dozens of women swooning over him. Meanwhile, she’d been like Rapunzel in the old-fashioned fairy tale, waiting to let down her hair for the only man she’d ever wanted.

She was upstairs an hour or so later, putting on her nightgown with the idea of getting into bed and trying to focus on a novel until Brian came home when she was electrified by the rattle of pebbles against her bedroom window. Goose bumps of disbelief washed over her. During their courtship, it had been Danny’s way of letting her know he’d come to call without using the doorbell. Could it be that he’d come over without phoning his first night back in town—and used the same calling card for old times’ sake? Or was she the victim of pranksters, a disgruntled student? Her hands shook slightly as she fastened her robe firmly about her waist and drew back the curtains.

He was standing in shadow, well beyond the trapezoid of light that spilled from her window. Yet she recognized him immediately. His power and maturity drew her like a magnet. Thank God I gave Brian the money to go to Ryersville, she thought. I wouldn’t want him to watch me go through this.

Below, Danny motioned for her to open the window. She obliged with mixed emotions, Pandora lifting the lid on a box of troubles, a banished angel hungry for a glimpse of paradise.

“I’m back, Cate,” he announced in the rough-edged, faintly mocking voice she still heard sometimes in her dreams. “Come down and say hello.”

She couldn’t deny how much she longed to see him again. Needed to, if only to get him out of her system. Both her heart and her mind were begging for it. Instead of inhabiting a featureless plain, a gouache rendered in shades of gray, she might learn to live again, with the enthusiasm of authentic emotions.

Ill-considered words flew from her mouth. “I will…if you promise to keep your hands to yourself.” Seconds later, her cheeks were burning at the assumption that he planned to do otherwise.

Agreeing to her terms, he waited for her to follow through. It seemed she’d committed herself. If she didn’t go down to meet with him, he might create a ruckus, bang on her front door. Or insist in a loud voice that she keep her word. Her neighbors would get an earful.

Meanwhile, what would he think of her? Would he decide their years apart had been kind to her? Or taken their toll? She didn’t have time to speculate. Or put on fresh makeup. Turning away from the window, she raced downstairs in her robe and slippers, frantically finger-combing her hair as she went.

A moment later she emerged from the side door of her house, which led, via half flights of stairs, up to the kitchen and down to the basement. Danny hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d been standing. Advancing toward him, she paused a few feet beyond his reach. Fortunately, they were partly hidden from the street by some overgrown lilac bushes that were in the process of losing their leaves, now that the autumn nights had brought cooler temperatures.

At close range, he was as good-looking as she remembered—lean, powerful, unimpressed by his own allure. His beautiful eyes blazed into hers, overflowing with questions. To her surprise, he didn’t pose any of them immediately. Instead, he seemed to be waiting for her to speak.

“Brenda told me you were back,” she murmured, desperate to break the silence that unnerved her so. “That you were staying at your grandmother’s house…”

He nodded. “Somehow it felt like the right thing to do. Brenda probably told you…I work for Mercator now. I’m here to decide the future of the tool-and-die plant.”

He was giving her the space she’d asked for—keeping his promise to the letter. And perversely, she didn’t want him to. If he didn’t touch her, she believed, her heart would break. Can we actually stand here and talk this way, like strangers after everything we once meant to each other? she asked herself. If so, I don’t think I can bear it. It would be as if we never loved each other desperately and ran away to get married, that all our hopes and dreams weren’t invested in each other.

“Is that your only reason for coming?” she blurted, only to realize the seemingly innocent question bore a heavy freight of meaning, as well. For some reason her tongue seemed bent on exposing all the vulnerabilities she hoped to keep from him.

If he considered the question a leading one, he didn’t say so. Instead, he took a tentative step in her direction. “It’s hard to see you in this light,” he explained. “You’re standing almost completely in shadow. As for your question, no, it isn’t. For quite some time I’ve wanted to return to Beckwith…get reacquainted with the place where I grew up.”

So it was the town, not the thought of seeing her again, that had drawn him there. Well, she’d wanted the truth, hadn’t she? When another silence lengthened between them she felt compelled to shatter it, if only to ease her heartbreak.

“How long do you plan to stay?” she asked, realizing too late that even such a simple query could unmask feelings better kept to herself.

Danny lifted one brow. “The answer depends on a number of things. What would you say to releasing me from my promise?”

In an instant he’d turned the tables. Her eyes huge, Cate shook her head.

“No hands, then,” he whispered.

When she didn’t protest, he took several steps in her direction. Her thoughts in turmoil, she retreated, until her back rested against the side of the house. Goose bumps of anticipation raced over her skin when he stopped just short of enfolding her and leaned forward with widespread arms to brace his palms against the wooden siding. The hard, sweet warmth of his body matched hers lightly from chest to thighs.

“Danny…please…we shouldn’t,” she protested, arguing against what the jilted seventeen-year-old in her was begging for.

His eyes gleamed at her in the chiaroscuro of shadow and moonlight. “Why not?” he asked. “Are you afraid your son will catch us?”

So he knows about Brian, Cate thought. But not the whole story. With Larry gone, only three people—my parents and myself—know who Brian’s natural father is. She shook her head. “He’s gone…to Ryersville with some friends for the evening. But the neighbors might see us. You know what Beckwith’s like. People talk.”

“Since when did you give a damn about gossip?” The deceptive calm in his low-pitched voice pierced her to the quick. “From what I’ve heard, you’re not involved in a long-term commitment,” he added. “Neither am I. Except for us, nobody stands to get hurt. We’re free to do whatever we wish.”

Danny wasn’t married! Or seriously involved with anyone! Cate’s heart soared even as she shrank from the perils of letting herself care for him again. It wasn’t true what he’d said, of course. Getting involved meant risking injury to Brian and the Andersons, not just to herself. If he walked out on her again, after stealing her heart a second time, the resulting pain might be unbearable. Even so, she ceased all struggle as—keeping the letter of his promise while thoroughly violating its spirit—he positioned himself more intimately against her body, effectively pinning her in place.

After so many years of struggling to feel something more than gratitude and friendship for Larry and later, sleepwalking through the suspended animation of widowhood, Cate came fully alive in an instant, so keenly that the sensation pierced her to the quick. She gloried in his touch, drank in the remembered aroma of his skin scent. She was profoundly amazed that he was actually there with her, in the little Ohio town where they’d met and fell in love. And she wanted to drown in the wonder of him, to open herself to the hard shaft of his desire that had made its seeking known against her body.

Tell me I’m not dreaming this, she begged the Fates that held sway in such moments. That I won’t wake up with empty arms and tears streaming down my face.

Her capitulation was like a goad to him. Incredibly, a door had opened, where for years there’d been a wall. The only woman he’d ever loved was pressed tightly against him and gave every indication that the arrangement suited her. With a little groan, he claimed her mouth. Imagined so many times—as he’d changed planes or flopped on his living-room couch to stare at the lights on Lake Shore Drive—the incredible sweetness of kissing her again blew him away. It was as if an integral part of himself, long missing, was suddenly back in place.

Don’t overwhelm her with too much, too soon, he warned himself, even as the urge to share the ultimate mysteries with her arose like an ache in his gut. Some questions have to be answered first.

From Cate’s perspective, his kiss was as deep as the earth. And so hungry! Its insatiability poured comfort into her empty places, even as it drove her to a peak of wanting him. Her recklessness soared as her nipples tightened. Mother, daughter-in-law, teacher, neighbor, she’d forced herself to focus on self-sacrifice, ignoring her innermost yearnings. Yet, incredibly, the rule-breaking teenager she’d been, the sensuous young woman who’d dared to accept his love despite her parents’ wishes, had lived on inside her, waiting to reemerge.

Danny, Danny, she confessed silently as she parted her lips to admit his tongue. If only you knew how much I’ve ached for this moment. I’ve been sleepwalking through my life without you. Even the joy of Brian’s birth, the pleasure of raising him, have been full of empty places. Just to taste Danny again, to feel his strong, lean body pressed against her, was like knocking on the gates of paradise.

Danny was thinking similar thoughts, though to his knowledge no child had sprung from their lovemaking. Hungering for a family, a woman to love, he’d wanted only her, their babies. She’d been completely out of reach. Yet, with every breath he’d taken, he’d wanted to reconnect. Now Larry wasn’t a factor. Though he still had questions about Cate’s reasons for marrying so soon after her parents had forced them apart, he was willing to ask them in good time, without any preconceived notions about the answers.

Meanwhile, he couldn’t get enough of her.

I’m going to drown in him, Cate thought. Lose sight of what’s best for all the people I love. With a little shiver of apprehension, she realized Danny still fit into that category.

Just then a car went by, slowing as it passed her house. About to release her grip on every hand hold and plunge into whatever Danny suggested, she caught the shape of lights mounted on its roof. Oh, no! she thought. Dean Lawler. If he saw us, he’ll be back to check out the situation. He’s just that kind of person!