Leigh Riker - Lost And Found Family

“Too bad. That party would be a good thing.”

“I don’t agree.”

He stepped back, then walked to his dresser, removed his cuff links and unbuttoned his shirt. Silence invaded the room. Except for the faint rustle of fabric as he tossed his shirt onto the bed, she heard nothing.

“Then, to change the subject,” he said after a long pause, “why does Christian keep hinting that he’s fed up with his job? Even last night in front of my friends? Where would he find a better-paying position, better benefits for his family and most of all a secure future?” he muttered with a curse.

“Don’t swear, Lanier.”

In four and a half decades of marriage he’d evolved from the charming Southern boy she’d wed into this stubborn older man who knew just how to push her buttons.

“If he doesn’t shape up, I’ll cut him out of my will. Leave the business to Chester Berglund. How does that sound?”

“Foolish, as you well know.” She rose to the challenge. “Chester Berglund may have kept a low profile so far—and don’t look at me as if you’ve never seen that. They may even play tennis together now and then, but underneath, I assure you, he’s Christian’s rival. Chester Berglund would love to be VP of sales. You and Christian may not see eye to eye, but he is your own flesh and blood.”

“And yours,” he pointed out, which counted for everything in the South.

Frankie turned her back.

“I’m worried about him, too,” she said. Every April on Christian’s birthday she gave thanks for another year of his life. Trying to save herself from a messy bout of hysteria—like Aunt Pittypat in Gone with the Wind—she said, “What would my Ladies’ Tea Society think if you disowned him?”

Lanier snorted, a habit of which she’d never been able to make him break. “Social climbing doesn’t become you, Frankie Owen Mallory.”

Yet he wouldn’t meet her eyes. His teasing seemed halfhearted.

“Wait a minute,” she said. The timing of his arrival struck her as too perfect. Almost as soon as Christian had stormed out, Lanier had gotten home. “That party was your idea. Wasn’t it?”

He framed her face in both hands. “Frankie, I only want you—us—to be happy again. Somehow. Maybe a party could be the right start.” His eyes stayed somber and his fingers trembled. “I haven’t forgotten how you were...after Sarah died. It’s the same all over again. Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He sighed. His hands dropped to his sides. His shoulders slumped. “I’m sure you do.”

An anniversary party. Indeed, she thought.

* * *

“NO SALE,” CHRISTIAN ANNOUNCED, shutting the door to the garage a bit too hard. He walked down the short hall into the kitchen and went straight for the sweet tea in the fridge. “The party’s off. If my mother isn’t the most stubborn woman—on the way home I thought I’d have a stroke.”

Emma sniffed the air as if she, too, smelled horse. But at least she didn’t bring up the General. And he wasn’t about to do so, either.

“Well, at least you tried. With Frankie, I mean.”

“Ball’s in your court now,” he muttered, dropping into a chair at the table. “And Dad’s.” As if that were a cue, Bob appeared from the other room, tail wagging, and laid her head on his lap. Her chocolate-brown eyes stared up at him in sympathy. “Why not forget the whole thing, Em?”

“I agree with Lanier. This family needs a celebration,” she said, stirring something in a pot.

“My mother doesn’t think so.” I see nothing to celebrate.

“I can try to change her mind, but after last night at Coolidge Park—”

“Emma, I’m sorry. I never meant to say wife instead of life.”

Still, he wasn’t sure of anything these days. Then he’d seen Emma deep in conversation with Max Barrett near the carousel, and something inside him had curled into a tight little ball. She never talked with Christian like that anymore. He didn’t think for a moment she was interested in another man, but she was pulling back...already had. He stroked Bob’s head. “How did your lunch with Mel go?”

Her face brightened. “If she approves my estimate, I’ll be doing her twins’ bedroom.”

“You think that’s the best idea?”

“I think it’s a fine idea,” she insisted. “If Melanie likes my work, she’ll recommend me to her friends the way someone else mentioned me to her.”

“Really,” he said. Not that Mel would ostracize her if things didn’t go well—meanness wasn’t in her nature—but he wasn’t sure a recommendation would mean much. Emma had lost too many clients since the accident, for which other people seemed to blame her, and was fighting to stay in business. As he’d told her, selling No More Clutter might be the better option. “Be careful,” he said.

“You don’t think I should do this?”

“I know you can.” He paused. Bob studied him with adoring eyes. “But you ran into the tribe’s buzz saw a few times just last night. Don’t forget—the worst phrase in this part of the country is ‘bless your heart.’”

“No one said that.”

“Some were likely thinking it, though, and you took the first opportunity to disappear from the pavilion. So don’t expect me to believe you’re not concerned or that you’re unaware.”

“I left because I needed air.”

“And to talk to Max Barrett.”

“I did want to apologize for not returning his calls but he found me first. And since then, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “That pony needs to be sold. Max offered to display it but—”

“It’s not the pony’s fault.” He stared into his glass. Bob blinked up at him as if she could see into Christian’s heart.

“But why would we keep it? I’m sure it’s beautiful, as he said, but instead of advertising his shop, it could give joy to another child...”

Christian’s senses went on alert.

“The playroom here was never more than half finished,” she went on.

His shoulders tensed. The room had formed a suite of sorts with Owen’s bedroom—his former nursery—on the other side of the jack-and-jill bathroom in between. And Emma clearly had other plans for it now.

“It would make a great home office, Christian. Temporarily. I know you’re not crazy about me bringing files here but I may have to. And while I’m looking for new space, which may take time, we could remove the mural, repaint the walls a different color—maybe a soft grayed taupe instead of the blue that’s in there now. There’s plenty of space for a desk on either side of that room.”

“For me, too? Or, no, you mean Grace? I don’t need a home office.” He paused. “You don’t, either. Sometimes I think your job will take over our whole marriage.” Now, he added silently, that there’s no little boy for you to come home to. As if Bob sadly agreed, she nudged her head into his hand. “After work we should be together.”

“That’s fine, but I still have a business to run.”

He tried to meet her eyes. “Emma, we have to talk, make sense of—”

Her voice quavered. “There aren’t enough words in the English language to make sense of what happened. Why can’t you see that?”

“So we should lock it all up inside and, what’s the phrase people always use, just move on?”

“That’s exactly what we should do.” She paused. “That’s all I know to do.”

“Well.” He eased Bob away, then rose from the table.

“Christian, what good is there in keeping the pony or keeping that room the way it is now?”

He turned to face her. Bob sat between them, head moving back and forth as if she were at one of his mother’s tennis matches. “You can’t even make yourself go in there,” he said, his jaw clenched. “How do you expect to sit there doing paperwork? Even to avoid me?”