Wintergreen

Chapter 8

Lorna took a small, delicate nibble of the pizza, failing to notice that a long strand of mozzarella cheese was still attached to the second pizza triangle on her plate. The gooey rope refused to break, just stretched on and on as Lorna tried to pull it free. It came loose finally, along with all the rest of the cheese on the slice. Not exactly a graceful business, eating pizza.

She swallowed and searched for a napkin. There was none. All of the napkins had been spoken for by Matthew and Johnny, both of whom were devouring their pizza slices without the slightest anxiety, while drawing diagrams of fission and fusion on their napkins. She got up and washed her hands at the sink, knowing she couldn’t eat another bite.

“Got a napkin, Mom?” Johnny asked absently.

He needed the napkin to draw a rocket on, for some unknown reason. Ah, fission.

Not Lorna’s forte. She leaned back against the counter drying her hands with a dish towel. Her stomach was doing cartwheels. Matthew sat there all cool and collected…and every word of his conversation so far had been directed at Johnny.

Somewhere beneath a solid layer of nerves, anger was gradually building up in her…or was it fear? She knew he’d drawn the wrong conclusions about Stan. She just knew…

The doorbell rang. Lorna was heartily sick of the sound. Normally, no one rang the bell; Freda and Brian just walked in. Neither man nor boy looked up, and Lorna tossed the dish towel on the counter and stalked out of the kitchen. Never, she thought, never was she going to get close to another man who judged her without a trial, who became jealous and suspicious before he even gave trust a chance. He could at least have asked her…

You asked for it. You wanted to believe things that couldn’t be true. Matthew is still a Whitaker… Her head aching abominably, she pulled open the front door, and promptly frowned. “Mr. Baker?”

Her neighbor from across the street did not make a habit of calling. In fact, they were barely on speaking terms from the time a year ago when Lorna had called the police about a raucous party at Baker’s house. A little noise was fine to welcome in the New Year, but she’d been frightened; there’d been bottles thrown in the street, and the burly revelers had been knocking on doors at four in the morning.

“I’m here to talk about that brat of yours,” the man said angrily, and stepped in, furiously stomping the snow from his feet.

“I beg your pardon?” She stared at him, unconsciously taking a protective step back when he put both hands on his hips. A full head taller than she was, R. A. Baker had a belly to rival Santa’s, but nothing of the cheerful temperament. Brown hair bushed around his ears below a bald patch on his crown; mud-brown eyes were set close together in thick, sluggish features. Normally. At the moment, his face was florid with rage, and his eyes were almost obsidian.

“That damn kid of yours put a rock through the picture window in my living room!”

“I believe you’re mistaken,” Lorna said stiffly.

“The hell I am. I saw him, first thing this morning. I would have called the police then, except that I had to get to work. I should have called the police-”

“To begin with, Johnny didn’t do any such thing. And if he had accidentally-”

“This was no accident, lady. And don’t tell me it wasn’t your kid. I saw that towhead of his, and I saw the brown coat-”

“Thousands of children have brown coats-”

“You get that kid of yours, and you get him now!”

Lorna pulled herself up to her full five feet five. The man did a fair job of looking totally intimidating, and she hated bullies. “Take a hike,” she said succinctly.

His jaw dropped an inch and a half, and his cheeks turned purple. “You want me to go ahead and call the police, I sure as hell will,” he said furiously. “I was willing to settle for having you pay for the window, and maybe give that hooligan of yours a good talking-to-”

“Hooligan!” He’d be lucky if he left the house alive.

“Misha.” Matthew’s hands clamped on her bristling shoulders from behind. She whirled into him, so outraged there were tears in her eyes. “This man-” she began furiously.

“Just tell me.”

She tried, with Beer Belly interrupting every third word. If Johnny had accidently broken a window, he would have told her. Since he hadn’t told her, she knew he hadn’t done it. Johnny would never sneak into a neighbor’s fenced-in yard, certainly not in the wee hours of the morning…

“And I heard you had plenty of trouble with the kid before,” the neighbor slipped in.

“Not that kind of trouble. And as for your false accusations, this-” she motioned furiously to Matthew “-is my attorney. So before you-”

“Misha.” Matthew’s hand went to the small of her back and tugged hard at the waistband of her pants, his knuckles pressing intimately into her spine. His message, so privately delivered, could hardly fail to get through. She gathered that he wanted silence, and glanced up at him. Almost imperceptibly, he motioned toward the kitchen door, and her eyes focused on a white-faced Johnny, staring at her with sick, guilty eyes. Her heart crashed five hundred lonely feet.

“How much will it cost for a new picture window?” Matthew flatly addressed the neighbor.

“Six hundred dollars.”

Lorna blanched. “But…” she started hollowly.

“Misha.” Matthew turned back to the man, and released his grip on Lorna, pulling a business card from his shirt and handing it to Baker. “You have insurance?”

“Sure I got insurance. But that’s not the point-”

“No,” Matthew agreed bluntly, “it isn’t. But then neither is coming over to vent your temper on someone half your size. I hope if felt good, because you’re all through now.” Matthew opened the door, not wasting any polite smiles.

“You listen here-”

“Your window will be taken care of. If you have any further problems, call the telephone number on my card. I believe we’re all through talking,” Matthew said pleasantly.

The other man opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Look. I have every right to be angry.”

“You have every right to be angry because your window was broken, but you have no right to be angry at the boy’s mother or to take it out on her.”

“If he was my kid-”

Matthew closed the door before Baker finished the sentence. Lorna was standing in white-faced silence, staring at his rigid features. She could easily read the contempt in his dark eyes, and she knew it was for her big-stomached neighbor. But was some of it for her as well? For a woman he simply assumed had been an adulteress; for a woman who raised a towhead who broke windows? Not how she wanted to represent herself. Nor, undoubtedly, had Matthew planned, when he invited her for a romantic interlude in Quebec, to be bogged down with the decidedly unromantic details of her life. He’d taken the man on for her, but she had a sick feeling in her stomach, and she dropped her eyes, feeling defensive and shaken up.

“Sit down, Misha.”

His voice came out quiet and gentle, but she shook her head. “Where did Johnny go?”

“I’ll take care of Johnny.”

She shook her head again more firmly. “Of course you won’t. I’ll take care of-”

“Sit down.”

Since her knees were caving in, she had little choice. The cushion of the chair was like a haven; she leaned back, closed her eyes and took deep breaths. She hated men who could walk into a situation and immediately take control of it.

Matthew was gone a long time. Then, suddenly, he was bending over her, his long arms straddling her chair, his eyes unreadable as he bent to press a swift, hard kiss on her temple. When he straightened up, she studied him. He was wearing a very strange expression, a wry glimmer in his eyes, a crooked slash to his mouth, a pervasive stiffness. “Baker was lucky he just called Johnny a hooligan. Anything worse and he’d probably have been on the floor with a concussion. Not that you have any violent tendencies where loyalty to your son is concerned, Misha.”

She couldn’t smile. “Johnny deliberately broke that window?”

She had a glass of brandy in her hands before he answered her. He hadn’t poured any for himself. But then, it was cherry brandy, a gift from Freda a long time ago, and perfectly dreadful. Still, she took a sip as he leaned back against the fireplace.

“He broke it deliberately,” Matthew said. “Planned it all just like a hardened criminal.”

She gulped down a second swallow. It was that or cry.

“Baker bought his wife a little pup a few weeks ago. Apparently the animal wasn’t trained, and messed up in the house. Johnny saw the man beat the pup. It didn’t die, just wouldn’t eat or take water or leave its doghouse for three days. Your son watched. The wife came home from work one day and took the pup away. Johnny’s determined to believe that she gave it away. The boy was trying to pay Baker back.”

Lorna listened in shock. “But he never told me.”

“You would have believed him, Misha. But he figured no one else would take the word of a kid over a grown-up. And even if they did, no one was going to punish Baker for his cruelty.”

Lorna took another sip.

“Misha, stop crying:”

She stared into the last of the red liquid in her glass. “Johnny has this thing about justice. But he can’t simply take the law into his own hands and destroy people’s property. I thought he knew better. I would never have guessed him capable of…of vandalism-”

She glanced up at his very sober profile, his wicked dark eyes. Just slightly, she relaxed. “Don’t tell me you would have done the same thing as a kid,” she accused.

“He saw a pretty little puppy crippled, all because of one man’s cruelty. The dog was helpless, Misha.”

And Johnny was a Whitaker, whose justice came from the heart. Still, she remembered the dreadful window that was going to cost her six hundred dollars. “I understand,” she admitted unhappily, “but he has to see that violence isn’t the way to right an injustice.”

“Give him credit for having so much courage at nine years old. For being willing to commit himself to what he believes is right.”

She set the glass down, folding her arms across her chest. Freda would have told her to land a solid ten on Johnny’s backside and deprive him of his allowance for the rest of his life. Lorna knew that was one of the reasons she had searched out Matthew again; she had known he would understand Johnny. She adored her son and respected his nine-year-old ethics, but as a single parent she was also frightened of Johnny’s volatile personality. “What did you say to him?” she asked suddenly.

“That I would love to see Baker behind bars. That that’s why I became a lawyer, so I could put cruel people behind bars. And that by taking the situation into his own hands, Johnny didn’t hurt Baker-he hurt you. To the tune of six hundred dollars.” Matthew hesitated. “He understands now that something he did hurt you. And I’ll pay for that window.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You certainly won’t.”

“I will.”

“When it snows in the tropics,” Lorna said politely.

He stalked forward, smiling. “I never argue with stubborn women. If you want Baker to be paid twice, Misha, you go right ahead, but in the morning he’s getting six hundred dollars from me, along with a little commentary. I don’t ever want to see him around here again. I intend to tell him that I’d like to rearrange his nose for him, but never mind that. Attorney talk would bore you.”

“Matthew-”

But before she could say anything else, Matthew had pulled her to her feet and was maneuvering her arms around his neck. His lips were gentle on her cheeks, on her temples. His cool hands slipped under the red flannel shirt and stroked the warm skin of her back.

“Your son is waiting to talk to you, so don’t start anything,” he whispered.

“Me?”

“You.” The graze of a whiskery cheek contrasted to the soft pressure of his mouth and she shivered. Her thighs tightened together, enclosing a secret pressure of curling desire that seemed to come out of nowhere. “I came to spend a few simple uninterrupted hours with you. Instead I find myself relegated to the kitchen while you entertain my competition.”

She jumped at the opening. “Stan isn’t competition, Matthew. He hired me to do a job.”

Matthew nuzzled the soft spot just behind her ear. “Honey, I never said it was your fault he looks at you as if you were whipped cream. In the meantime, a quiet supper is interrupted when you try to get into a fist fight with a man twice your size, and I find myself handling your kid as if I had a right to. It’s not my style to interfere where I haven’t the right, Misha. Any kid without a father is vulnerable to a surrogate. No matter how sure I am, it takes two to make that decision and you’re still running shaky. Scared, Misha? You think I can’t see it? Put all that on top of the way you disgracefully teased me in the woods…”

“I never…”

His fingers suddenly tangled in her hair, arching her head back. His tongue brushed the softness of her lips, then stole inside to find the dark warmth. Those few inches between them suddenly weren’t there anymore; his tall frame pressed closer to her, her breasts crushed to his chest, her thighs against his. Liquid suddenly seemed to flow in her veins, but it wasn’t blood. It was molten gold, hot and bright, startling her with its intense rush.

“Say you’re coming to Quebec with me,” he murmured huskily. “I want you, Misha.”

“Yes.” Siberia. The South Seas. Dayton, Ohio. Wherever he wanted. She had never made a decision so easily.

Bemused, Lorna watched Matthew drive away a few minutes later. When he was out of sight, she turned toward Johnny’s room and caught a quick glimpse of herself in the hall mirror. She wore the silliest smile…

Matthew almost had her believing that he initially took a distant attitude toward Johnny solely to protect the child from unconsciously becoming attached to him. He hadn’t thought of Johnny in relation to Richard (or to Ron Stone?). He believed that no child belonged in a romance until the two participants knew with certainty that they were going to stay together.

Matthew almost had her believing that he hadn’t jumped to any erroneous conclusions about Stan. Competition, he’d labeled the man, smiling. Wickedly smiling. She’d seen the first possessive look, had suffered an anxiety attack over dinner anticipating the kind of jealous tirade Richard would have leveled at her… Matthew had felt that jealousy. She would have staked her life on that.

Lorna turned away from the mirror, the smile hovering as she walked toward her son’s room. Dammit, if Matthew Whitaker didn’t repeatedly manage to take the wind out of her sails. She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Or maybe she was still scared to believe what she really wanted to.

Johnny was curled up with his arms around his knees on the bed waiting for her with a stricken white face. “I don’t like what Matthew said. I don’t know who he thinks he is,” her son blurted belligerently.

She sat down next to him, not touching yet. “Johnny-”

“How could he say I hurt you? I’ll pay for the stupid window, Mom. You’ve got to understand. If you’d seen that puppy…”

She didn’t have to. She saw her son’s face, and she gathered him close, hugging him desperately as tears sprang to her eyes. There wouldn’t be so many more times when her son was still young enough to let her hold him, to allow her to see him cry. She was shocked at his breaking that window, and she was going to be very, very tough…in the next life.

Not this one.

In this one, she fell in love with Matthew just a little bit more because he took on her son so she wouldn’t have to. In the interim, there was a man in Johnny’s life whom he respected, though he didn’t know it yet. Johnny was very, very angry with Matthew at the moment.

“I thought he liked me. Then he says do I know what I did to my mother? Do you think I would have done something if I’d thought it would hurt you?”

“No, sweetheart,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “I never thought that.”

“He said he was disappointed that I hadn’t thought about you. Disappointed in me. You never said you were disappointed in me in my whole life.”

So Johnny was smarting from his first man-to-man talk. But there would be no apron strings for him.

Lorna could already see just how much a certain man’s opinion meant to her son.

The delicate model airplane that Johnny had put together was a pre-World War II model, and a testimony to the patience she thought her son had. He didn’t have it, actually. Lorna had decided to reglue it while he was in school, so the entire thing wouldn’t fall apart. When her fingers were stickily committed to positioning the wing on the fuselage, the phone rang.

She fumbled for it, snatching up the receiver to cradle it between cheek and shoulder, becoming thoroughly exasperated when the model plane slipped from her hands. “Hello?”

“Misha? You sound ready to start throwing things.”

“Not at all.” She chuckled, wondering if he could read her mind. Repositioning the plane’s wing, she listened to a few minutes of Matthew’s chatter. He sounded tired, too tired. Nor was it like him to waste a lot of time on small talk.

“…so I’m thinking of taking him on anyway, a rookie fresh out of law school. He’s got a thing for hockey, and I have tickets for the game tomorrow night…a good chance to get to know him outside an office setting, Mish, but it’s been a hell of a week and I’m frankly in no mood for socializing. Will you go to the game with us? I hope to God you like hockey.”

She swallowed rapidly, setting down the plane. “I love it!”

“You’re sure? I hate to rope you in on such short notice-”

“I adore hockey, Matthew, it’s no problem.” She hesitated, wanting to scold him for sounding so tired, but she knew he would resent her noticing. Besides, it sounded wifely. “Who’s playing?”

“The Red Wings and the Blackhawks.”

“Wonderful,” Lorna gushed enthusiastically.

A few minutes later, she set down the receiver, wrapped three rubber bands around the glued plane parts to hold them in place and stared out the window at the falling snow. Not that many years ago, Richard Whitaker, Sr., had had a one-man attorney’s office. Four more men in it now? No wonder Matthew was tired, with that kind of expanding business; she felt proud of him for his success, and she felt a modest glow of pleasure that he was willing to involve her in his professional life.

She glanced at the clock, and dialed Freda’s number at work. “Freda? First of all, could you babysit for me tomorrow night at seven, and second, what do you know about hockey?”

“First of all, I might just be able to cancel my seven hot dates tomorrow night so I can babysit, and second-” Freda hesitated “-I’m fairly certain that’s the game that involves the puck and the hockey stick.”

“I knew that.”

“So what is it you want to know?” Freda added dryly. “Hockey players are the ones who always look as if they just left a dark alley at midnight and lost.”

“Not helpful.” Lorna sighed. “Now I assume the Red Wings are from Detroit, but where do the Blackhawks come from?”

“Toronto?” Freda suggested.

“I need a definite answer.”

“Minnesota.”

“If you think I’m going to continue to ask you questions at this rate-”

“I wouldn’t,” Freda agreed.

“Did you save last night’s sports section?”

“Of course not. I use that to wrap the garbage.”

“So do I,” Lorna said sadly.