Jennifer Greene - Wintergreen

“I did. I knew the moment I walked in and saw you here that whatever gave you the courage to come here had to be really important to you. Do you want to tell me over dinner, Misha?”

“I…” Her head whirled. “No, I can’t, Matthew. Johnny’s waiting. There’s someone taking care of him, but I have to get back.”

His jaw tightened at the mention of Johnny’s name. All the more reason why his request startled her. “So? You were going home to eat anyway, and I haven’t eaten either. If you don’t have enough food, I could stop and pick up something…”

He waited. She hadn’t the slightest idea what to say. In the deepest part of her soul, she knew that was exactly why she’d come, not so much for the money as to talk about Johnny with Matthew. Because he was a Whitaker, because he was…Matthew. Yet she’d never really expected him to give her that option, feeling as he did about her, about his brother. And Johnny was a reminder of that awful time…

“You’re right, Misha,” he said suddenly, as if he could read her mind. He sighed, standing up and looking at her with weary, brooding eyes. “I have no desire to see the boy,” he admitted bluntly. “I don’t even know what prompted me to ask you to dinner, but seeing you again and…” He hesitated, and his voice suddenly went low and gentle. “I haven’t forgotten my brother. But that’s not to say I ever thought he was blameless. I can imagine what the past nine years must have been like for you, raising a child alone, losing your father. I read about his death in the paper, Misha, and I’m sorry. More than once I worried about what had happened to you.”

“I’ve wondered about you, too,” she said quietly. She hesitated, slinging the purse over her shoulder again. “But I never really expected you to forget what happened between Richard and me.” Her voice was careful, the question in it almost unconscious.

“No.”

“Of course not,” she said swiftly, and stared at the door. “Well…”

“To forget something of that magnitude isn’t possible, but then, to say I haven’t changed in nine years would be just as foolish.” He shrugged, just a little, a boyish gesture that made Lorna want to smile. “We used to enjoy quite a few dinners together, Misha. To make peace in the Middle East, reorganize the banking system and straighten out your misguided politics.”

“ My misguided-”

His teasing chuckle was tentative. “I was just kidding,” he said gently. “There’s no reason why it should be difficult for us to sit down to dinner together. I said you could have the money, Misha, and you can-no strings attached. But if you want to talk to someone about it-”

“I do. For one thing, I don’t want you to think I want the money for some whim…”

Brilliant, aren’t you? Lorna scolded herself as she pulled the Camaro onto the highway. Matthew’s low-slung Morgan was directly behind her. Thanks to her big mouth.

A real friend would have committed her. Where were her real friends when she needed them? Now she remembered that Johnny was capable of taking an instant dislike to any man who walked in the door, that meat loaf was not exactly a gourmet dish fit for a Whitaker, that she had no tactful way to explain Matthew’s last name to her son, and that the only thing she wanted to talk to Matthew about-Johnny-was the only subject that was clearly forbidden.

And Matthew… What he’d been thinking of, she just didn’t know. She’d never really understood him. So often after she and Richard were first married, he would pop over for dinner, even though he knew what a terrible cook she was. Occasionally, he would appear for an evening the same way, unconsciously smoothing troubled waters between herself and Richard when he couldn’t possibly know there were troubled waters; seemingly, he had come for a cup of coffee and conversation. Lorna had always thought he should have been spending his free evenings with an attractive blonde on his arm. Or brunette. Whatever his choice. All right, for some strange reason she and Matthew had always had a certain rapport, but that was before…

Before Richard had found her in a compromising position with another man. And it couldn’t have been much more compromising, she reminded herself wearily as she set the cruise control and tried to relax for the trip home.

Eight and a half months after that episode, one blond baby had been born to two brunette parents. She had never cheated on Richard, but her word was not fact, and the Whitakers were sticklers for facts. Perhaps she could have fought the divorce, but the only fact she could have presented to any of them was a picture of herself as a child. A towhead, like Johnny, and like her mother and grandfather, all of whom had turned into brunettes as teenagers. So she could have produced a photograph, and she could even have subjected her baby to a paternity test, but Johnny’s paternity was really only a moot point by then. She knew Richard had been looking for an excuse to divorce her. Faith, love, trust had all gone by the wayside; there was no marriage left to fight for by the time the child was born.

Richard was overly possessive and fiercely jealous-qualities that seemed to come with the male Whitaker genes. Richard, Sr., had at first treated her like a daughter…and later had treated her like scum. It was like turning over a record and finding on the flip side the ugly qualities in the men whom she had once cared for so much, whom she had trusted, who had trusted her…

She hadn’t given Matthew the chance to hurt her as Richard and his father had. Matthew had tried to get her to talk; in retrospect, she could see that for a long time he had tried to help her through the turbulent marriage. Always kind, often there, perceptive and calming… Richard had found it amusing that his formidable older brother had taken a little sister under his wing. But when push came to shove, Lorna had shut Matthew out. She was angry and frightened and young. Mr. Whitaker’s contempt had hurt her to the core; contempt from Richard… Well, the end of the marriage had changed her whole life. To risk contempt from Matthew…it was too frightening, in some subtle way she never defined; she simply refused to lay herself open to it. It was easier just not to speak to him. Perhaps she knew unconsciously that there was some point at which she might completely break apart, splinter into a thousand little pieces…

And you wanted to get involved with him again?

Yes, she finally admitted wearily to herself. Yes. The marriage had scarred her, and badly. For many years, she hadn’t had the energy or the desire to pursue a relationship with another man. Then, about two years ago, she had become aware not only that her son needed a father, but also that she had strong sexual and emotional needs that couldn’t forever be sublimated in work and daydreams.

Fine. She’d discovered very quickly that most men really weren’t all that eager to take on a woman and a half-grown son. Yet there were some. Enough so that at twenty-nine she was not particularly pleased to find herself turning into a tease. When a man came on too strong, all she could think of was that he might judge her easy, as Richard had judged her; that she was again putting herself into a position where she could be condemned without a trial, that she would be left vulnerable, without defenses…

She was not guilty. She was tired of feeling guilty. For Johnny’s sake, and for her own, she wanted the truth spoken out loud, t ’s crossed and i ’s dotted.

So simple. So painfully simple. Yet Lorna’s plans had gone haywire the moment Matthew had walked into his office. Matthew was not her brother-in-law anymore. He wasn’t acting like a brother; she couldn’t seem to feel that he was a brother… Leave it, she told herself. Serve him dinner and just try…