On Love's Own Terms Page 11

  Maybe she’d give Sueanne a call. She’d never seen her house or met her children. And she really did need to talk with someone.

  Sueanne answered on the eleventh ring, her voice breathless and her words rushed. “Oh, I’d love to visit with you, but I’ve got a doctor’s appointment and I’m running late.” She laughed wryly. “Jon, my oldest, decided to fingerpaint with raw eggs on the kitchen floor. And Vicki added coffee grounds for color.”

  The phone on Sueanne’s end clattered loudly then as she dropped it. Bonnie heard two swats, immediately followed by a chorus of wails. The miniature monsters were getting their just desserts from the sound of it. A few seconds later, the sound of crooning hushed the anguished cries of childhood.

  “Sorry about that,” Sueanne said contritely into the receiver. “I spanked them for picking the three tulips that the dog hadn’t trampled. Then they told me they’d brought me flowers because I’m the ‘bestest’ mommy in the whole world.” She sighed, sounding positively exhausted. “I can’t win for losing today. Thank heavens Tom is bringing pizza home for dinner. With my luck, anything I cooked would probably turn to cinders before it reached the table.”

  “I’ll let you go, then.” Whether in sympathy for her friend or from lack of sleep, Bonnie suddenly felt weary to the bone. “Will I see you at the wedding on Saturday?”

  “If I can get organized, you’ll see me tonight at the softball game.” A thump and a yelp in the background prompted a hasty good-bye from Sueanne.

  Bonnie hung up and yawned. For such a small town, people sure stayed busy. She sealed the cake layers with foil and set them on a pantry shelf, done for the day. In the silence, she could almost hear the echo of her own heartbeat. She watched from the kitchen window as Darlene and Dave strolled hand-in-hand across the newly mowed meadow, walking toward the waterfall. The clothes hanging on the line swayed in a soft breeze, drying naturally.

  Her sister had a fiancé; her friend had a husband and children; nearly all of her New York acquaintances had similar relationships. She sighed, feeling terribly alone. Everybody had somebody, it seemed.

  Too tired to think, she turned and started upstairs. A nap might improve her gloomy outlook. Unaccustomed to sleeping during the day, she found it difficult at first to relax. Gradually, though, she drifted off. Her dreams were filled with pint-sized versions of Luke, a planeload of them, all flying away from her. Tears trickled from beneath her closed lids, falling on her pillow.

  * * * *

  The sun’s last rays slanted warmly through the window when Bonnie left her bedroom, and the sweet smell of cornbread beckoned from the kitchen.

  “Damn! You spoiled our surprise.” Despite her grumbling, Darlene smiled as she turned a nicely browned loaf of pone out of the pan and onto a wire rack. “We wanted to have the table set and the food hot before we woke you.”

  “Look at that nice mess of catfish that Luke caught.” Dave finished folding the paper napkins and started sliding them under the silverware arranged beside the dinner plates. “I just hope he left some for the rest of us who enjoy wetting a line.”

  “By the time you’re through honeymooning, little brother,” Luke scoffed, “those fingerlings I threw back will be keeper size.” His hair waved damply from a shower, and his cheeks were ruddy. He winked broadly when Bonnie joined him at the counter. “Do you want to bet those babies will be full-fledged granddaddies by then?”

  “What kind of odds are you giving?” she teased, her voice husky from sleep.

  “For you?” He looked into her eyes, and everything else vanished from her sight. “Only the best.”

  Bonnie tore her gaze away and watched him take the filets from the cornmeal batter and drop them, crackling, into the hot electric skillet. She couldn’t concentrate standing this close to him, so she moved a step away. “How can I help?”

  “By staying out of our way,” Darlene answered firmly. She poured sun tea from a pitcher into a glass full of ice, stirred some freshly cut mint into it, then ordered sternly, “Sit down and drink this.”

  “But I feel like a three-toed sloth just sitting here,” Bonnie protested. “At least let me put the pans to soak or—”

  “No.” Darlene removed a relish tray from the refrigerator and placed it in the center of the table. “We all decided this might be our last chance to pamper you for a while, and we’re going to do it in style. Right, guys?”

  “Right!” they agreed together.

  Darlene shook her finger under Bonnie’s nose. “Now, I’m going out to open the garage doors so Dave can put the mower away. You’re not to move a muscle except to lift your glass. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bonnie replied with mock meekness. The back door banged shut behind Darlene and Dave.

  “Since you’re in a yes mood this evening...” Luke’s suggestion trailed off on a distinctly expectant note.

  She tilted her head and said in a teasing tone, “You haven’t asked me anything yet”

  “This morning I asked you to marry me,” he reminded her.

  “No, you didn’t. You told me.”

  “Same difference,” he countered evenly, slipping the spatula under the filets and flipping them over, golden side up in the skillet

  “It is not,” she argued. “In the restaurant, you presented our life plan already mapped out. And when I didn’t immediately agree to your terms—”

  “I asked you to think of a solution, and you hightailed it into the rest room,” he said laughingly.

  “I went to the rest room as a matter of necessity,” she corrected with mock indignation.

  “I can see I’m not going to get any admissions out of you tonight,” Luke grumbled as he scooped the crispy, fried catfish onto a platter. The back door swung open then as Darlene and Dave came inside, and dinner was served.

  Bonnie polished off two helpings of everything. Despite the confused thoughts tumbling through her mind, she found herself laughing and joking with the others, relaxed on a full stomach.

  “Dave is washing, and I’m drying,” Darlene announced as she cleared the plates and utensils from the table. “You two go on outside and sit a spell before the game begins.”

  A group had already gathered in the meadow, measuring off the distance between the bases and securing the bags in the ground. Someone spotted Luke when he and Bonnie stepped onto the back porch and yelled for him to come help choose the teams so the hitting and pitching strengths would be evenly divided.

  He waved his assurance that he’d be there shortly, lit a cigarette and leaned against the door frame. “If I had asked you to marry me, how would you have answered?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied honestly. When his eyebrow shot up in surprise, she quickly clarified. “I love you, make no mistake about that. And while I applaud the fact that marriage is going modern to accommodate different careers and lifestyles, I’m just old-fashioned enough—”

  “Hey, Luke!” Tom rounded the corner of the house, his arm draped around Sueanne’s shoulders. “Hi, Bonnie!”

  Bedlam erupted when the two strawberry-blond children tagging along behind them squealed “Unca’ Luke!” in unison and clambered up the porch steps. He crushed out his cigarette, welcomed the toddlers with open arms and swung them both high into the air.

  “I’ll go inside and relieve Dave as dishwasher,” Bonnie offered.

  “Aren’t you going to play softball?” Tom questioned.

  “You fill my position,” Sueanne insisted. “I’m out of the line-up until after I deliver. Doctor’s orders.”

  “But I haven’t touched a bat in seven years,” Bonnie admitted. “I’d be more of a hindrance than a help.”

  “Good,” Luke declared, a devilish gleam in his dark eyes. “We’ll put you on Tom’s team.”

  The children squirmed free and dashed down the porch steps. Sueanne lumbered after them, sternly warning them not to touch the pretty flowers.

  “Play ball or forfeit the game!” Whoever hurled the
dare from the meadow knew exactly how to elicit a rise from Luke.

  “Let’s go get those rag-arms!” He leaped over the porch rail and raced toward the makeshift field, war-whooping all the way.

  Dave barreled out the back door, soap suds dripping from his hands, and ran across the yard. By the time Bonnie, Darlene and Sueanne arrived with the toddlers in tow, Luke’s team was warming up on the field and Tom was writing his team’s batting order in the score-book.

  Darlene grabbed a leather mitt from the equipment sack and trotted toward left field after detouring past second base for a kiss from Dave. Catcalls and friendly insults flew through the air as everyone geared up for the game. With a groan, Sueanne sat down on the blanket her husband had spread on the ground, then pulled her children onto what remained of her lap.

  Caught up in the excitement, adrenalin pumping through her, Bonnie double-knotted her sneaker laces and did a couple of deep-knee bends to loosen her muscles. In years past, she’d always batted lead-off, because she was fast enough to steal second base and almost a sure bet to score a run if one of her teammates hit a single.

  Aiming a Bronx cheer at Luke, who stood poised for action on the pitcher’s mound, she lifted a bat and tested its weight in her hands. Ugh! Heavier than she’d remembered.

  His knowing grin when she dropped it annoyed her no end. Picking up a shorter, lighter club she stood off to the side and took some practice swings. Much better. His gaze smoldered with a silent challenge when she assumed her stance and wiggled her rear, exactly as he’d taught her so long ago.

  “You’re batting last,” Tom told her, handing the scorebook to Sueanne before grabbing a club and stepping toward homeplate.

  Last! Miffed at his obvious lack of confidence in her ability, she kicked a clump of grass. If only she’d kept her mouth shut earlier... the story of my life, she thought glumly, sitting down with her team and awaiting her chance at the plate.

  Her turn didn’t come in the first inning. Luke struck out the first two batters on six straight pitches and forced the third to hit a weak grounder directly at the first baseman.

  “You’re playing right field,” Tom directed, tossing her a stiff, old mitt to wear before he jogged away.

  Right field! Had he forgotten that she used to be the quickest shortstop in three counties? Why, the Widow Painter could play right field and never draw a deep breath! Choking back her protest, she stomped out to her assigned position and furiously worked the inflexible excuse for a glove onto her hand.

  Bonnie finally got to bat in the third inning. Like the majority of her teammates, she struck out, swinging too late at a high-inside hummer. Luke beamed with triumph when she missed, and she glared at him as she marched past the pitcher’s mound to resume her fielding position.

  It wasn’t a game anymore. It was war!

  The score was tied at one apiece, thanks to homeruns with nobody on by Luke and Tom when twilight threatened to cut the contest short. Bonnie’s team was at bat and she rubbed the rosin bag between her damp palms, nervously aware that she’d be the final out for her side if she didn’t get a hit.

  The first batter struck out, the second one tattooed a line drive right into Dave’s glove. Bonnie stepped up to the plate, her heart pounding wildly beneath her ribs. Luke released a fastball, and she missed it by a country mile.

  Her teammates groaned. He grinned. She glowered.

  His next pitch, a change-up, had her name written all over it. Bonnie’s hands stung clear up to her elbows when she slammed the ball, and Luke’s jaw hung slack when he heard the resounding crack. She dropped the bat and raced flat-out toward first base. Safe!

  Her teammates shouted. She smiled. He scowled.

  Tom picked up his favorite club and faced his best friend, temporarily turned foe. Luke glanced at Bonnie poised on the base path, ready to steal second, and his expression would have soured milk. Tom fouled off the first pitch, and she tagged the base before resuming her running stance.

  “Luke’s got a real steam on tonight!” a fielder yelled.

  Her pulse accelerated when he went into an agile wind-up.

  “Smoke him out, Luke!” the shortstop razzed.

  She tensed when he threw the ball, sprinted when she heard the smack of the bat, then stopped abruptly when Luke caught the pop-fly for the final out. They called the game because of darkness, ending it in a tie.

  Although her muscles protested whenever she moved, Bonnie’s elation dulled the pain. She hadn’t lost her touch after all these years! It felt wonderful shaking hands with everyone, being part of this big, happy family of good sports.

  “Help!” Sueanne cried from her blanket on the ground.

  While Tom helped his pregnant wife to her feet, Bonnie and Luke carried the sleeping children to their friends’ truck. She refused to dwell on how natural he looked with that little boy in his arms. Nor did she let it feel too right, holding the little girl. Her emotions were tangled enough without wondering what it would have been like if life hadn’t thrown them a curve.

  “That was a nice hit tonight,” Luke complimented as Sueanne and Tom drove away.

  “You should have seen your face when I was safe at first.” Bonnie laughed.

  “I play to win.” He shrugged and began climbing the front porch steps. “I always have—I always will.”

  “Well, right now you’re talking to a very sore loser.” She moaned, limping alongside him.

  “l’ll rub yours if you’ll rub mine,” he offered.

  “I hope you’re talking about sprained ankles and aching backs,” she groaned.

  They fell asleep on the living room floor, fully dressed, the unopened bottle of liniment lying on its side between them.

  Chapter 9

  Sometime in the night Bonnie turned to Luke and watched him sleeping. She lay with her arm crooked on the hard floor, pillowing her head while monitoring the even rise and fall of his chest and the slight flare of his nostrils as he breathed.

  With her fingertips, she touched the cool skin of his face and felt the beginnings of tomorrow’s beard. She wanted him—not for a week, but forever. He stirred, murmuring unintelligibly, then extended a muscular arm and drew her closer. She wanted his children—not until tonight when she’d seen him holding another woman’s baby had she realized how desperately she still needed to give him one of their own.

  But she mistrusted her body. Miscarriage had been the most personal kind of failure, a physical and emotional trauma that had left her riddled with self-doubt. Except for childhood sniffles and bouts of nausea early in her pregnancy, she’d rarely suffered a sick day in her life. When the doctor had told her she was losing her baby, she’d had no idea how painful it would be or that anger and disappointment would plague her long after leaving the hospital.

  Luke rolled from his back onto his side, and Bonnie turned in the same direction. He molded her curves to his vibrant male contours, one large hand possessively cupping her breast while the other pressed flat and warm across her abdomen. He held her as though he would never let her go.

  She remembered vividly how bewildered he had looked when the orderly had wheeled her past him, toward the swinging doors that led to the operating room. He had leaned over the surgical cart to tell her something—that he loved her, perhaps?—and the quarry dust clinging to his work shirt had drifted onto her tear-stained face before a nurse pulled him away. She had tried to reach out to him, but they’d taped her arm to an intravenous board and strapped it to the gurney.

  Her physical anguish had ended abruptly enough under general anesthesia. When she had awakened alone and unpregnant in recovery, though, her emotional turmoil had just begun.

  Because the medical ward was full, they had moved her into a room near the newborn nursery. The well-intentioned remarks of others— “You’ll have plenty of healthy children later,” or “It was for the best; something was obviously wrong with the baby”—had done more harm than good. No one, it seemed, understood that she grieve
d for the baby who existed in her mind, although it had been unable to exist independently of her body.

  The doctor had sent her home with instructions to rest, abstain from sexual relations and visit his office in six weeks for a check-up. She had left the hospital feeling like a failure, and the events leading up to the divorce had destroyed her already battered ego.

  Luke whispered an endearment in his sleep, and Bonnie nestled closer to his hard frame. The midnight train rumbled through town, rocking them gently in its wake. Remarriage, especially when they would be commuting cross-country because of their professional commitments, was a risk in and of itself.

  The idea of living alone through the week certainly didn’t scare her—she had survived for seven years in a city of strangers and learned some important lessons in self-sufficiency as a result. Nor did the thought of refusing those weekend catering assignments really bother her. The takeout business that her shop did at lunchtime and during the holiday season was incredibly profitable.

  What she disliked most about Luke’s proposition—she didn’t yet consider it a bona fide proposal—was the fact that they would be apart more than they would be together. If they were going to start over, she wanted the stability of sharing the good and the bad on a daily basis. She wasn’t the least bit interested in becoming a weekend wife. Dating her husband on Saturday night, then kissing him good-bye on Sunday...

  Bonnie’s eyelids grew heavy. She wanted to make love to him when she felt romantic, fight with him when she was angry, laugh with him when... her lashes smudged her cheeks as she fell asleep in Luke’s arms.

  * * * *

  “Good morning, glory,” he greeted softly.

  “Already?” she mumbled in disbelief. Bonnie opened one eye to the blinding sunlight, then shut it and sighed. “Already.”

  “How about it?” Luke pulled her closer, if that was possible, and she received a very rude awakening. “Will you marry me?”