Buch lesen: «A Question Of Love»

Chapter One

Honey Logan dropped like a rock onto the Victorian settee and stared in horror at her mother-in-law. From the placid expression on Amanda Logan’s aged, but still lovely face, she seemed to have no idea that she’d just announced the impending end of Honey’s world.

“Now, dear,” Amanda said, tapping Honey’s hand lightly with the tips of her well-manicured nails, “this shouldn’t take too long. A few weeks at the very most.”

“A few weeks?” Amanda might as well have been suggesting a few centuries. Honey tried, without too much success, to erase the desperation from her voice. “Isn’t there anywhere else he can go?”

“I was so hoping that you would agree to this.” Amanda leaned back in her wheelchair and sighed. “I’m afraid there is nowhere else. His house hasn’t been lived in for over two years, and it needs cleaning and fixing.” She smiled at Honey. “He is my nephew, dear. Family. I couldn’t very well turn him away, now, could I?”

Yes, you could have, Honey wanted to yell. You could have told him to get a motel room in the next town, the next state, another country, anywhere but here.

Regretfully, she knew she couldn’t make that kind of demand. No matter how much she loved Amanda and Amanda loved her, her mother-in-law owned the house. Honey resided there purely as a guest. Despite her efforts to make Honey think of it as her home, she lived here at her mother-in-law’s pleasure, as her home-care nurse. As such, Honey felt she had no more say in what went on here than the gardener or the housekeeper. Her mother-in-law’s innate consideration for everyone in the house was the only reason they were even having this conversation.

“Of course you couldn’t,” Honey finally managed to murmur.

“I knew you’d see the sense of this.” Amanda squeezed Honey’s hand reassuringly. “It’ll work out for the best. You’ll see.” Heaving a tired sigh, she settled back in her wheelchair. The light from the Tiffany chandelier overhead played in the facets of the diamond rings adorning two of her fingers. “I’m exhausted. I think I’ll go to bed early. I hate to bother her at this late hour, but would you mind finding Tess and asking her to get the spare room ready? I’m afraid Matt will be here first thing tomorrow morning.”

Seeing that the conversation had overtaxed Amanda, Honey didn’t try to prolong it. Besides, she couldn’t come up with an argument that wouldn’t sound frantic and interfering. “Would you like some help getting back to your room?”

The older woman shook her head, then raised her chin in a way Honey knew indicated pure stubbornness. “No. I’ll manage on my own.” The curve of her lips and the love in her eyes softened the crisp words.

Smiling inwardly at her mother-in-law’s refusal to give in to the infirmities of old age, Honey nodded. She had a tendency to be overprotective of those she loved, but Amanda always found a way to gently remind Honey that she wasn’t quite ready for a nursing home.

Honey followed the electric wheelchair into the hall. The soft hum of the motor grated on her frazzled nerves. She saw Amanda safely seated in the chairlift that would carry her to the second floor, then stowed the wheelchair in a nook beneath the stairs. After making sure Amanda reached the top safely, where her walker waited. Honey headed down the hall in search of Tess, Amanda’s long-time friend and housekeeper, to tell her of the arrival of their visitor tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning.

A sense of doom washed over Honey. In a few hours the secure life she’d made for herself would crumble around her.

She’d spent years forgetting the touch of Matt Logan’s lips, the caress of his hands, the way his smile warmed her soul, the afterglow of his tender love-making. But most of all, she’d fought hard to forget the pain she’d endured when he’d left town without a word to her.

Now, after seven years of silence, he planned to stroll back into her life as if he’d never left. To make matters worse, he’d be staying with them.

Matt under the same roof with her…and Danny. Oh, glory, she’d forgotten about her son. With concentrated effort, she tamped down the panic that followed on the heels of that thought, and fought for stability. She straightened her spine, forcing courage to the surface, courage she didn’t really feel.

You’ll deal with it, she told herself. You’ll deal with it just like you dealt with your father and your brother, Jesse.

But Matt, for all his flaws, had in no way resembled either her domineering father or her silent, brooding brother. Matt had been warm and understanding, and though he hadn’t known it, her emotional bulwark against her father. Matt had been…everything, or so she’d thought.

Suddenly, she felt like she had when her father had forced her to marry Stan Logan, Amanda’s spoiled son—as if her world had spun out of control, leaving her helpless and vulnerable. And with that vulnerability came dread.

She stepped into Tess Martin’s domain and found it deserted. Honey’s gaze darted to the kitchen wall phone. Emily. She’d call her sister. After all, not long ago, Emily had had to contend with having a man she’d once cared about walk back into her life. Maybe she’d know what Honey could do. In any case, talking to someone might help her regain her focus, and right now, she desperately needed focus. Focus and a plan.

Picking up the receiver, she held it to her ear with shaking hands and dialed Emily’s number. Emily’s mother-in-law answered.

“Rose, I know Emily is probably busy putting the twins to bed, but can you ask her to come over as soon as she’s finished? I need to talk to her. Danny’s father is coming home.”

Before Rose could answer, Tess came into the kitchen. As if she’d been doing something wrong, Honey abruptly hung up. Bad enough that she felt like a complete fool for allowing the sudden reappearance of Matt Logan to throw her for a loop. She didn’t have to broadcast it to one and all.

Tess grinned at her. The housekeeper’s apple cheeks dented into deep-set dimples. Honey had always felt apple-cheeked women were a product of children’s literature, until she met Tess. But then, a lot of kid resided in Amanda’s Irish cook.

“Secret admirer?” Tess asked with the familiarity acquired over the twenty-plus years she’d been with Amanda. The housekeeper had long ago adopted the entire Logan clan as her own, and treated them accordingly, including Amanda. Going to the sink, she began rinsing the cups Honey and Amanda had used for tea earlier.

“No. Just talking to my sister. She’s coming over.” Honey suddenly had too many hands and nowhere to put any of them. “I’ll make some coffee.”

As she started the mindless task of assembling a pot of coffee, she could sense Tess watching her. Knowing how possessively Tess ruled her kitchen, when she finally spoke, it shocked Honey that her words held no reprimand. “Something wrong, dear?”

Honey jumped at the unexpected question. “Huh? Oh, no, what makes you ask?”

Gently, Tess removed the pot from the coffee-maker, then swung the basket open. “Even though she makes coffee strong enough for a mouse to trot across, Miss Emily prefers it on the weak side. But I’m thinkin’ this might be just a wee bit too weak even for her.” They both stared down at the empty filter. “You sure there’s nothing wrong?”

Shaking her head, Honey stepped aside and allowed Tess to add coffee grounds to the basket. “I’m fine, just a little distracted.”

That had to be the understatement of the century. Distracted didn’t come close to describing her confused mind, her rolling stomach, her throbbing temples and the need to run anywhere as far and as fast as she could, as long as it was away from here, away from Matt.

“Miss Amanda wants you to freshen the spare room. Her nephew is coming to stay for a while. He’ll be here tomorrow morning.” Was that really her voice sounding so calm and in control?

“Matthew? Coming here?”

Honey nodded.

Tess huffed impatiently. “Why didn’t she wait until morning to be tellin’ me? Nothing like giving a body notice.”

“We just found out a few hours ago.”

“Oh, well.” Tess’s frown turned into a grin. When she spoke again, her lyrical Irish accent became even more pronounced. “I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Never could figure out what that lad was up to. He hasn’t changed a jot. Sure and it’ll be lovely to have him home again.”

Delving under the sink for the basket with all her cleaning aids in it, Tess extracted it, hooked it over her arm, then grabbed her broom and headed out the door. As she passed into the hall, she continued a discourse on Matt’s virtues.

Honey didn’t hear what she said, nor did she care that Amanda’s housekeeper proclaimed Matt to be the greatest thing since bottled water, or that everyone else in the house took immense delight in his unexpected visit. Honey had her own opinion of Matthew Logan, and it didn’t come anywhere close to being charitable or delighted.

When she thought about the mess he’d left her to untangle, her anger began to rise to the top of her thoughts like cream in a milk bottle. The angrier she got, the less shaky she felt, so she gave her temper full rein, enjoying being back in control. By the time Emily walked through the door, Honey had summoned up a full head of steam. All of it aimed at Matt Logan.

MATT STEERED HIS BLACK pickup truck to the side of the road, right next to the sign that read Welcome to Bristol, New York, Population 3,000 & Growing. He grinned at the optimism of the town fathers. Unless things had changed drastically, Bristol had remained relatively the same size for over thirty years. With the exception of when the town fathers allocated funds for an occasional spring touch-up, the sign had also remained unchanged.

He took in the familiar mountain skyline, sighed contentedly, then did a quick check of the motorcycle tied down in the back of the truck. His hometown felt good, right, familiar. He planned on proving to all those naysayers that you could return to your roots, even if it meant doing battle with demons from the past. Maybe that bull had done him a favor when it gored his leg and forced him to take early retirement.

Memories crowded into the interior of the truck. For a long minute he just sat there, staring out the windshield at the town from which he’d fled. He hadn’t come back, not once, not even for Stan’s funeral a year ago or his father’s funeral two years before that.

He sincerely regretted not being there for his aunt when Stan had died, but coming would have meant seeing Honey again, and he hoped to avoid that for as long as possible. Besides, he’d been in Australia with the rodeo, and by the time he got back, it would have been all over. When he’d spoken to Aunt Amanda a few days ago, he’d expressed his regret, and she’d assured him that under the circumstances, she’d understood his absence. But it didn’t erase the guilt from his conscience. Stan had been his best friend, and despite what he’d done, and the fact that Matt hadn’t forgiven him, Matt should have made the effort to attend for his aunt’s sake.

His father’s funeral was a different matter. He’d stayed away intentionally. What good would it have done to be there? The old man wouldn’t have cared one way or the other. Matt’s existence had never been of any great importance to Kevin Logan during his life. Why would it be any different at his death?

Matt stirred restlessly, then stretched his right leg over the seat. The long ride straight through from Texas had cramped the muscle in his injured limb. As he gingerly massaged the cramped calf muscle, he recalled the doctor warning him that this would happen for a while. The ache finally eased.

A full moon, hanging like a large ripe lemon in the sky, turned the treetops behind Osgood’s Market to silver. Funny, but that moon never quite looked the same from anywhere else.

Suddenly anxious to once more become a part of the slow-paced, sleepy hamlet, Matt pulled back onto the road and steered his truck toward The Diner. He knew it would be the one place in town open at this hour, the one place that served the best cup of coffee and the biggest burgers in four counties. Once he’d filled his rumbling stomach, he’d head to Aunt Amanda’s and then, in the morning, he’d go to the town hall and pay up the overdue taxes on his father’s house.

No. Pushing the past out and moving in new memories, happy memories, meant starting to think of it as his house.

Jim, a fellow rodeo rider, had warned Matt that he would need to settle up with the past before he could start a future. Matt didn’t believe that. If he just concentrated on redecorating and stopped thinking about the unhappiness he’d known in that house, the memories would soon fade away. Besides, how do you settle up with a man who’s dead and buried?

“SO, WHAT DO YOU PLAN on doing?”

Honey avoided Emily’s gaze and her question. The silence in the kitchen grew louder. She occupied her hands by stirring her cold coffee. Her shield of anger had dissolved as quickly as it had materialized. Uncertainty had returned with a vengeance.

“Honey?”

She gave an abrupt shake of her head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I hate to be the one to point this out, but you don’t have a whole lot of time to decide.” Emily stopped Honey’s nervous movements by placing a hand on her arm. “He’ll be here in the morning.”

“I know that,” Honey snapped. Immediately contrite about her sharp tone, she flashed a weak smile at her sister. “I know,” she repeated more softly. The role of the one needing advice did not sit well with her.

She stood, walked to the sink, then poured out the cold coffee. Turning, she grabbed the coffeepot and refilled her cup. “What right does he have to come back here and intrude in my life?”

“The same right my husband had to come back. Like Kat, this was Matt’s home, the town where he grew up.”

Knowing her statement had been totally unreasonable, Honey refrained from replying. Slowly, she shifted her gaze from the dark liquid in her cup to her sister’s worried face. “Do you think he’ll notice—about Danny, I mean?”

“Unless he’s gone blind in the last seven years, I’d say the odds are very good that he’ll catch on. You better prepare for it.”

Honey nodded, unable to speak past the knot that Emily’s warning brought to her throat.

Emily glanced at Honey, then at her cup, then back to Honey. She played absently with the end of her long, brown braid. “There’s something that always bothered me, but you never wanted to talk about Matt, so I never asked. Why didn’t you tell him?”

Honey sighed, then took her seat across from Emily. She stole thinking time by carefully arranging the base of Danny’s superhero mug to fit inside a group of green gingham squares on the place mat. She smiled sadly. Even Danny had heroes, but in all her life, she could not ever recall having one herself. Shaking away the unusual wave of self-pity, she directed her thoughts to Emily’s question.

“Dad told me not to tell anyone. Said it would just make matters worse.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that they could have gotten much worse. I tried to tell Matt, anyway.” She plucked nervously at a loose thread in the place mat. “Problem was, no one in town knew where to find him. He’d just vanished.” She held her palms up and hunched her shoulders. “After a few years went by, I just felt it would be better not to disrupt anyone’s life. What was the sense?” She almost added, Would it have brought Matt home?, but thought better of it.

“What about Matt’s dad? Did you tell him?”

She shook her head. “Mr. Logan never took much of an interest in Matt.” She stared off into a mental world devoid of any memories of Matt and his dad interacting. “I never saw any sign of affection between them. Sometimes I got the feeling that Matt didn’t exist for his father. After Matt left, Mr. Logan became more unapproachable than ever. I went there a couple of times, but he wouldn’t answer the door, so I gave up. I sent him a letter, but since he never acknowledged it, I don’t even know if he read it.”

“What about Matt’s mother?” Emily shifted to a more comfortable position in her chair, then crossed her denim clad legs. “I was too young to remember her. Did she leave them or what?”

“She died suddenly when Matt was ten.” Honey sipped her coffee and made a face. Cold again. She set the cup down and pushed it away, then looked at her sister. “All this reminiscing is not solving my immediate problem, Em. How did you handle Kat showing up? I know you were so angry at him you wanted to beat him to within an inch of his life, then you ended up marrying him and having his twin daughters, but what did you—”

“Whoops. Wait a minute.” Emily held up her hand. “The circumstances were a bit different.”

“Sure, you wanted him to father your child so you could fulfill the conditions of a crazy old man’s will and keep your home.” Honey smiled for the first time that evening, then shook her head. “You never did anything simply. Leave it to you to go overboard and have twins. Dad would be very happy.”

At the mention of her twin daughters, a beautiful smile transformed Emily’s face. “Best bargain I ever made. I got a man I adore and two delightful children. And don’t forget Rose. My best friend turned out to be my mother-in-law. Not bad for a girl who was ready to hit the panic button when she found out about the codicil to Dad’s will.”

“Ready to hit it? To my recollection, you slammed your fist into it.”

Both women laughed. The laughter died slowly, but when it did, Honey still had not found a solution to her dilemma. How did she contend with Matt coming back into her life?

“So, what’s my answer?” she said, looking at Emily.

Emily checked her watch, then stood, slipped her purse strap over her shoulder and smiled weakly at Honey. “I don’t know that there is an answer, at least not one you can turn into a concrete plan. I’d say play it by ear. Go with your gut.” She started to turn toward the door, then paused. “Better yet, go with your heart.”

Honey frowned.

MATT STOOD ON THE FRONT porch of his aunt’s house. He glanced at his watch: 1:00 a.m. He should have left The Diner sooner, but he’d enjoyed talking with friends he hadn’t seen in years, remembering old times, rehashing the trouble he and his cousin Stan had gotten into as kids. He’d missed that while wandering from place to place. That friendliness, that familiarity was what he’d come home to recapture. Certainly that would chase the unhappy ghost from the corners of his house and his life.

He glanced at Amanda’s front door and reached for the knocker, then hesitated. He knew a dynamite blast wouldn’t wake Tess, but his aunt had always been a very light sleeper. He hated to wake her just to let him in. However, the one other place he could hope to find a soft bed for the night happened to be located in a motel thirty miles away. After driving for hours, he didn’t want to even think of getting on the road again. They’d find him in the morning wrapped around a pole somewhere, his injured leg swollen to the size of a small tree trunk.

He continued to stare at the door, trying to work through his problem, then an idea came to him. He stepped back to inspect the rose trellis on the side of the house. It had frequently provided him and Stan with late night access to Stan’s bedroom during their senior year in high school. Should he? He’d probably be arrested for breaking and entering and get thrown in the Bristol jail. Oh, hell, at least he’d have a warm bed to sleep in until he could make bail.

Quietly, he limped to the side of the house and grabbed the first set of slats on the trellis. Pulling himself up, he bounced experimentally, testing the strength of the makeshift ladder and his leg. He had gained a few pounds since his senior year and wasn’t sure that time hadn’t rotted out the trellis.

Though it creaked a bit and his leg throbbed slightly, he decided that both would support his weight for the short climb. Slowly, he inched his way up, cursing softly at the bite of an occasional thorn piercing his skin, then boosted himself over the balcony of Stan’s old room. The French doors stood open. Tess had no doubt been airing the room for his arrival.

NEXT DOOR, Amanda Logan had heard the telltale creak of the rose trellis, a noise she’d grown familiar with when Stan and Matt had used it as an emergency entrance after their twelve o’clock curfew had come and gone. She’d recognized her nephew’s voice cursing the rose thorns, just as he had years before. Just to make sure she wasn’t wrong about the identity of their midnight visitor, she slipped from her bed and, with the aid of her walker, shuffled to the window.

Just as she pushed the curtain aside, Matt launched himself over the balcony rail. For a moment, she waited for Stan to follow on Matt’s heels, as he would have years ago. Back then, she’d have stood here watching the two teenagers scale the balcony railing, all the while thinking they’d pulled the wool over her eyes.

But Stan didn’t appear. Stan never would appear again.

Tears threatened. Though a year had passed since Stan had been killed in his race car, the pain sometimes felt very raw, the emptiness overwhelming.

She shook the tears and the poignant memories away, then maneuvered herself back to the bed. No time now for sorrow. Now was the time for new memories, new adventures, new loves.

She lay back against the pillows, quietly picturing the scene in the next room.

Tomorrow, thanks to fate and her slight intervention, this dreary old house would bear witness to an old wrong being set right, and perhaps, in the process, a new beginning.

MATT STEPPED OVER the threshold of his cousin’s old room and stopped dead in his tracks.

There, spread out over the discarded bedcovers, lay a woman clad only in a T-shirt and bikini panties. One long, shapely leg stretched out across the white sheet. The other, bent at the knee, helped to expose a good portion of her naked bottom.

He crept closer, then moved to the side to allow the moonlight to bathe her supine body. He felt like a voyeur, but he couldn’t help himself. Something about her called out to him, something familiar. When he stood at the foot of the bed, he knew why.

Honey Kingston lay deep in sleep, her hand cupping her cheek, her glorious honey-blond hair splayed over the pillow in loose tangles.

Despite the shock of seeing the one woman he’d hoped to avoid, he had to admit that she still had the power to take his breath away—and to provoke that churning fear that had sent him running from her years earlier.

He could not recall ever seeing a woman who equaled Honey’s beauty, and he’d seen many on his travels. His stomach felt bottomless. His heart threatened to implode. Old emotions rushed forward. Emotions Matt had tried to kill in every way he could for over seven years. Emotions he’d been certain he had dealt with—until now.

As if it were yesterday, memories of her soft flesh sliding over his buffeted him. Almost unconsciously, he moved to the bedside. Something drove him, something he couldn’t seem to control. He touched her cheek with the pad of his thumb and ran it slowly and gently over her creamy skin. She moaned and stirred in her sleep. He pulled back, half from fear of waking her, but more from that old sensual magnetism that spelled trouble and gave life to that gut-wrenching need stirring deep within him.

Despite his fear, emotions he’d thought never to experience again where Honey was concerned ran rampant through him. His groin tightened. He wanted to climb into bed with her and kiss her to wakefulness, hear the little noises she used to make when he made love to her, feel his heartbeat join hers.

He jumped back as if scalded. He had to stop this—now. Damn her! What was there about this woman that stole his common sense, his shield of protection, his pride? Even if he could get past his base inclinations, the fact remained that she’d married his cousin before Matt’s trail dust had had time to settle. Pain sliced through him, as sharp and agonizing as it had when he’d first gotten word of her betrayal.

The clipping that announced the wedding had come in a plain white envelope with no return address. Only a postmark stamped Bristol, NY, and the date. He’d recognized the handwriting as his father’s, the only one who knew where he was. Matt still didn’t know why he’d contacted his father and sent him the post office box address. Maybe he’d hoped the old man would change. Maybe…

He whirled and headed for the door. He shouldn’t have come here. Could those naysayers he’d scoffed at known what they were talking about, after all? Perhaps you couldn’t come home again. Perhaps the ghosts of his childhood were much stronger than any human’s resolve to banish them. Perhaps he hadn’t gotten over Honey Kingston and, God help him, maybe he never would.