Loree Lough - Suddenly Married

Wouldn’t she?

Dara had heard of being backed into a corner, but it had never actually happened to her before. Well, you’re cornered now, she told herself, figuratively and literally. She stood, shoulders and backside pressed against the cool wall, blinking into his dark-lashed blue eyes. Instinct told her Noah would never harm her. So what’re you afraid of? she wondered as her heartbeat doubled.

Was fear responsible for her racing pulse? Or had some other emotion made her feel light-headed and jittery, like a girl in the throes of her first crush?

The only light in the foyer spilled in from the living room, soft and dim and puddling on the deep-green slate in buttery pools. The hazy amber rays painted his face in light and shadow, accenting the patrician nose, the square jaw, the fullness of his thickly mustached mouth.

She wasn’t afraid of him, Dara realized. Rather, it was her reaction to him that scared her witless. The pull couldn’t have been stronger, not if he were made of ore and a magnet had been implanted in her heart.

Noah pressed his palms against the wall, one on either side of her head. “If you insist on going home,” he said, “I insist on driving you.”

“But…”

But that would mean bundling the children up and loading them into the car, putting all three Lucases at risk on the slick, snow-covered roads.

“But what?” Noah asked.

Dara closed her eyes. Lord, she prayed, tell me what to do!

“Father,” Angie called from the top of the stairs, “we’re ready.”

“I’ll be right there.”

His mustache grazed her cheek before he pulled away. Without taking his gaze from Dara’s eyes, he grabbed her hand, led her back into the kitchen. “There’s a canister of hot chocolate in the pantry. Why don’t you fix us both a cup while I make my rounds.”

She glanced toward the French doors that led to the deck. Noah hadn’t turned off the spotlights, and they illuminated thousands of fat snowflakes, as big as quarters, that drifted down and landed silently atop the high, silvery drifts. Every twig and branch seemed to reach up and out, welcoming the thick downy blanket of white. Lovely as it was, Dara couldn’t drive in this. Noah had been right: her aging little compact could barely make it over speed bumps; it would never make it through a foot and a half of heavy, wet snow.

One foot on the bottom step, he turned and said, “I think the snow is a blessing in disguise.”

“A blessing?”

He nodded. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, and now that you’re a captive audience…” He gave her a small, mysterious smile, then climbed the stairs two at a time.

Does he want to talk more about the Pinnacle funds? Dara wondered as he disappeared around the landing. She had the impression that subject was talked through. Shrugging, she walked into the kitchen. After filling the gleaming chrome teapot with tap water and setting it atop the back burner, Dara grabbed two mugs from the cabinet above the dishwasher. He doesn’t seem like the cocoa type to me, she told herself, dropping a tea bag into each cup. And while she waited for the water to boil, Dara wandered into the family room, where she held her hands above the warmth radiating from the big black woodstove.

She’d heard that Noah had lost his wife several years before moving here. So who had decorated this room? The furniture looked brand-new. Twin muted-blue plaid sofas, facing each other, flanked the fireplace. At either end of each stood a bleached-oak table. On one sat a lamp made from a birdhouse; on another, a brass lantern that had the earmarks of an antique. Magazines, arranged in a fan shape, lay on the coffee table. And framed photographs, rather than paintings or prints, decorated the walls.

Dara moved in for a closer look, saw first a five-byseven picture of Angie, bundled in a bunting, snuggled in her mother’s arms. Noah’s wife had been a beauty, just as Dara had suspected. Long, dark hair spilled over one shoulder, and wide, brown eyes gleamed with maternal pride as she smiled at her infant daughter. Another picture, taken a year later, showed her in a similar pose, this time with Bobby on her lap.

Beside that photograph hung an eight-by-ten fullcolor portrait of Noah and Francine on their wedding day. Her shimmering hair had been gathered in a loose topknot and secured by a wreath of tiny red roses and baby’s breath. The off-the-shoulder gown skimmed her trim waist and hips, rippled out behind her like a white satin river. And Noah, outfitted like royalty in a white tuxedo, stood straight backed and beaming beside his beautiful new wife.

Like the stage manager of a one-act play, the photographer had set the scene, positioning the bride and groom face-to-face on the altar’s red-carpeted steps, arranging her gauzy veil to float around her face like a translucent cloud. He’d placed vases of flowers at their feet, linked their hands around the stems of her redrose bouquet. Talent and artistry aside, he could not have fabricated the love that blazed in their eyes.

Dara had dreamed all her life of loving—of being loved—like that. What would it be like to have found and lost it, as Noah so obviously had? Devastating, she thought. And for the first time since their meeting, Dara believed she understood why Noah sometimes seemed so standoffish, indifferent, almost harsh with his children: he was holding life at arm’s length to protect himself from experiencing such pain ever again.

But if that was the case, why had he come so close to kissing her…not once but twice!

Sighing, Dara returned to the kitchen, where the water was at a full boil in the kettle. How would Noah take his tea? she asked herself, stirring half a teaspoon of sugar into her own mug. With honey and lemon? Cream and sugar? Or just plain? If she had to guess, she’d choose the latter. Everything else about him was no-frills, from the neatly trimmed mustache above his upper lip to the gleam of his razor-cut hair.

And whatever it was that he wanted to say to her, she had a feeling he’d get straight to the point.

Francine had always been the one who’d listened to their prayers, but once she accepted the fact that her illness was terminal, she had said, “It’s important that you be there for them, morning and night. How else will they learn that talking to God can be as easy and as natural as breathing?”

It had been just one of the many things he’d promised in her last hours. So far, he hadn’t let her down. With the help of a cleaning service, he kept the house shipshape and saw to it Angie and Bobby ate three squares a day. He made sure they continued with their piano lessons and took her place in helping them with their homework. And most important of all, he’d made a point of attending Sunday services with them after their Bible class ended. “Children learn by example,” Francine had said.

More times than he cared to admit, Noah wished he’d been more observant of all the little things she’d done to make his life pleasant and peaceful. Things like pretty flower arrangements that brightened dark corners. His bathrobe, belted and hanging neatly in their closet. Socks, freshly laundered and paired, then rolled into a ball and tucked into his top dresser drawer.

She’d known without his saying so that he didn’t like his feet cramped into a tightly sheeted bed. And so, in addition to covers that were pulled back and smoothed, Francine had, without fail, untucked the sheets and blankets every night.

Raised in St. Vincent’s Orphanage with nothing but a change of clothes to call his own, the closest he’d come to loving and being loved was when old Brother Constantine invited the lonely boy to join him for his daily walks around the academy grounds.