Cara Colter - A Hasty Wedding

“Let me think about it,” she said, and was rewarded with the stunned look that appeared on his features.

She suspected no one had ever said no to Blake Fallon before. Oh, she’d seen how all the beautiful women of Prosperino fawned over him.

Well, it certainly wouldn’t hurt him to feel what the rest of the world felt for once.

She took her pocketbook out of the bottom drawer of her desk and shrugged back into her neat navy jacket, then stood up.

“Excuse me,” she said coolly.

He couldn’t get off the edge of her desk fast enough. She suspected he was still watching her, his mouth open, as she went out the door.

But she didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking back, even though she suspected he stood in the office doorway, watching her as she walked all the way home.

Home was only a few hundred yards from the office, a lovely little cabin that had once served as a bunkhouse on the ranch.

Her mother and father, had they taken the time to visit her here, would have been mortified by her humble lodgings. She was a long way from the palatial home outside of Prosperino that her mother and father had once shared and that she had grown-up in.

But as she walked up her creaking steps, she felt a wonderful sense of homecoming. The cat, Mr. Rogers, woke up from his favored position on the rocking chair on the front porch and came to greet her, rubbing himself against her legs until the static crackled.

“So it’s you who’s responsible for the hair I always have on the seat of my pants,” she greeted him. She realized if anyone was watching, talking to her cat would make her seem even more the pathetic old-maid secretary.

So she bent down to pet him, taking a quick glance back over her shoulder at the office. She had been wrong. The door was firmly shut, and Blake was not watching her.

As if.

She opened the door to her cabin and went in, and the troubles of the day seemed to fall away.

She loved this space she had made for herself. Some of her favorite drawings from the children were on the rustic log walls, pictures of the children themselves crowded her mantel. The rough wood floors that demanded slippers at all times were covered in bright throw rugs.

Her simple furniture—two red plaid armchairs and a yellow love seat—were shaped in a semicircle around the fireplace. The same stonemason must have done all the ranch fireplaces, because they were all equally beautiful.

A ball of wool attached to two needles, which a sweater had been taking shape out of for the last six months, was heaped on one of the chairs.

There was a stack of romance novels under the coffee table—a new addiction, one she now could see was quite related to her feelings for her boss. It was a safe way to explore her feelings without making a fool of herself.

The way she would have if she had said yes to his invitation to accompany him to the dance.

She wandered through to her bright but small kitchen, put her purse on the table and traded her shoes for her slippers.

Of course, she reminded herself, she hadn’t exactly said no, either.

She had said she would think about it, and true to her word that’s exactly what she was doing.

The lovely feeling of homecoming dissipated, and it occurred to her that of course she was going to say yes. Eventually.

With a moan of something approaching terror, she went into her bedroom. It was another room that gave her great pleasure, a peaceful feeling. Her big four-poster bed with the white eyelet lace cover and pillows provided such a beautiful contrast to the rough-hewn gray logs of the walls. It was a room that would have looked in place a hundred years ago. It was a restful space.

And that restfulness was completely lost on her.

She threw open her closet door and began to sort frantically through the meager items hanging there. After realizing she had not one suitable thing to wear to a barn dance or any other kind of dance, she went into her tiny bathroom and looked in the mirror.

She took off her glasses and studied her eyes. Hesitating, she reached for a small pot of makeup.

An hour later she stared at herself, aghast. She looked precisely like Bobo the Clown.

She found herself making the call she never thought she would make.

“Mom? I need you.”

B lake lay awake and restless in his bed until he could stand it no more. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. He would lie down, and the horror of all those people getting sick would start to replay in his mind. Especially the kids. The fear in their eyes. The paleness of their skin. Running the first ones to the hospital in the old van. Then the old yellow school bus. And then the ambulances coming, one after another.

Rationally he knew it wasn’t his fault.

Irrationally, he believed it was his job to look after them, and that he had failed, just like everyone else most of these kids had ever placed their trust in.

The helpless fury came then. Who would hurt children? Especially ones like these, who had already been hurt so damned much by life?

After punching the pillow a few more times, and getting his legs tangled up in the covers, he finally got up. The room had a distinct chill in it, so he pulled on his jeans, then flipped on the light. His bedroom, like his office, was free of clutter, and had about as much character as a barracks. Metal frame bed, gray blankets, white sheets. Clothes folded neatly on the chair underneath the window. Somehow those rooms had been vastly preferable to the constant bickering of his mother and father when they had been together. After they had split, his home life had deteriorated even more. He knew with that razor-edged intuition of children, that neither of his parents wanted him. He put a cramp in his mother’s manhunt, his father was cold and indifferent. Blake came to wear the label worn by so many children in pain: incorrigible.

These were the kind of rooms he had come to manhood in. Plain, no frills foster home bedrooms and detention center dorms.

Then he’d arrived at the Coltons’. Meredith had delighted in making a room just for him, asking him subtle questions about his favorite colors and his favorite sports, leading him up the stairs one day and throwing open the door of a room he had never seen before.

“This is for you,” she’d said.

Just for him, a bedroom that had been every boy’s dream. She’d tactfully overlooked his interest in motorcycles, which had been the cause of most of his grief, and decorated in a baseball motif. The walls were covered in baseball posters, and there were matching blue, red and white curtains and quilt. She had found him a signed Joe DiMaggio ball and put it in a glass case. The bat, which had hit a winning run in a California Angels game that Joe Colton had taken him to, was signed by the team and mounted on one wall. There had been a desk and a computer and a stereo and a study lamp.

But the truth was, he’d been sixteen when the Coltons took him in, and his tastes were already formed. He felt at home with a certain monkish austerity, or maybe deep inside himself he did not believe he deserved all the fuss, did not quite believe he would ever be the kind of wholesome all-American boy who would fit in a room like that one.

Brushing aside the memories, Blake went out to his kitchen and flipped on a light. There was paperwork all over the table that he had wanted to get to tonight, but even though he couldn’t sleep he didn’t want to do it now.

His decorating theme of no-personality repeated itself in this room. It looked like a kitchen in an empty apartment. Except for the papers on the Formica table, it was a barren landscape. No canisters on the counters, no magnets on the fridge, one little soup stain on the stove the only evidence someone actually lived here.