Some Enchanted Season (7 page)

“Do you want to go?” Neither his face nor his voice gave any hint of his own preference.

“Yes. No.” She shifted uncomfortably on the glider. “I haven’t dealt with strangers in a long time—and these people are worse than strangers. They know me, but I don’t know them. Frankly, the whole idea leaves me feeling …”

“Scared?” he suggested, his voice softer and more sympathetic than she’d thought it could be.

After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded.

“You always loved the idea of that kind of holiday celebration—in part, I guess, because you’d never had it. It would be a shame to turn it down now just because
cause you don’t remember the people. Did you feel awkward with the sisters?”

“No. They’re sweet old ladies.”

“Do you think they would let you feel awkward as a guest in their home?”

She gazed across the street at the Winchester house. Sometime in the last few minutes, Agatha and Corinna had come outside again, still bundled up, and were now on their knees in the side yard, digging up, then replanting, bulbs with the help of the little boy. He crouched beside them, intent in his concentration, rarely speaking but quick to respond to their directions. She wondered who he was, which Winchester friend was lucky enough to have him in her life.

“No, probably not,” she murmured before turning away from the scene.

“As far as the rest, no one’s going to comment on any of it. You don’t need to feel self-conscious.”

He was right, of course. Nice people weren’t likely to point out her shortcomings. They might wonder what scars her makeup and clothing hid, but they wouldn’t ask.

“It’s up to you,” Ross said with a shrug. “You can see what you’ve missed out on all these years, or we can have another quiet Thanksgiving at home.”

Just like they’d had for sixteen years. On rare occasions there’d been one or two guests at their table—Tom Flynn, when he hadn’t gone off with whatever woman was temporarily in his life, or sometimes a business associate of Ross’s—but for years it had been just the two of them. In the early years they’d cooked the meal together, stuffed themselves, then watched
TV or napped away the afternoon. In recent years the staff had done the cooking before going home to their own meals, and she and Ross had dined in stiff formality before separating to spend the rest of the day in solitary pursuits.

She would love to see what a
real
Thanksgiving was like.

“Okay,” she agreed. If it was too much to face when the day arrived, she could always beg off, could always come up with a legitimate medical reason to excuse her cowardice or to cut the visit short.

She turned her attention back to the scene around them, and Ross took advantage of her distraction to watch her. That morning was as big a change in his routine as hers. Normally, he was in the office by seven, eating breakfast at his desk, taking care of business, planning the day with Tom and Lynda. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept past six, or had an entire day ahead of him with nothing scheduled and no one demanding his attention. It made Maggie feel free. It made him feel free, too, but
she
liked the feeling. He was pretty sure he didn’t.

“What do you want to do about breakfast?”

She pointed to the empty plate. “The cimmanon—cin-na-mon rolls were breakfast.”

“One roll?”

“Actually, I had two. Sleep late around here, you miss out.” She gave him a look, made an uneasy offer. “I can make toast.”

Last night she’d suggested oatmeal with bananas. Now her confidence had been reduced to burning a slice of bread on both sides. He hated that the woman
who’d once created gourmet delicacies out of nothing now doubted her ability to turn water and rolled oats into oatmeal.

Standing up, he offered his hand. “Come on. Let’s go in. It’s cold out here.”

“That’s why I put on a coat.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“And they say
I’m
the brain-damaged one,” she murmured. Ignoring his hand, she picked up the plate and stood up without any problem. The instant she tried to take a step, though, she faltered and reached for the closest thing—his arm—for support.

“Sitting in the cold can make your joints stiff,” he murmured mildly as her fingers curved around his forearm.

Sending a scowl his way, she took one small step, then another, then let go. By the time they reached the door, she was walking with only the slightest of limps. With her smug look as she crossed the threshold, she made sure he noticed.

At times her stubbornness and determination had driven him out of his mind. There was no such thing as a simple argument with her, and too often compromise wasn’t part of her vocabulary. She’d decided that she hated his work and had never relented, had determined to despise their house before the plans were even finished, and to this day hated it intensely. She held grudges for ages, stood her ground long after a reasonable person would have surrendered, and consistently refused to admit that she might conceivably be wrong.

But there were also times he’d admired those qualities tremendously. If she hadn’t been so stubborn, her
mother would have manipulated Ross right out of her life. If she’d lacked determination, she never could have worked two jobs to put him through his last two years of school. She never could have pushed him the way she had, never could have loved him as long as she did. Stubbornness and determination had brought her back from death last Christmas Eve. They’d brought her through a difficult recovery, and, with a little help from him, they would see her into a new, independent life.

He wished for a little of her determination for himself, to help him into his own new life.

Inside, he refused to open the office door and glance inside, to see if the message light was flashing on the machine, if pages awaited his attention in the fax. He’d broken every promise he’d ever made Maggie. This last promise was one he would keep, no matter how difficult.

The kitchen was warm and made warmer by the sunlight that came through the east windows, falling in brilliant wedges across the vinyl floor. It was a great room if you were the sort of person who spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Over the last five years, he’d forgotten that Maggie
was
that sort.

He was ashamed to admit that he had forgotten a lot about her.

He watched as she started the coffee. He’d watched her make coffee before, a haphazard operation at best, but that morning her movements were deliberate—removing one and only one filter from the stack, fitting it inside the basket, carefully scooping the grounds from a canister marked
COFFEE
, measuring the water. She
turned it on, frowned, then remembered to plug in the cord. When the red on light appeared, she smiled with satisfaction.

That satisfied look gave him a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. She was one of the smartest and most capable people he knew. She could arrange a last-minute dinner party for fifty without blinking, could coordinate a formal ball for five hundred with ease, could put together the most elaborate feast with no need for recipes or an extra set of hands.

And that morning she was inordinately pleased because she’d gotten the coffeemaker running with only one hitch. Life was so damn unfair.

Which was one way to look at it, he acknowledged. He could feel sorry for her and frustrated over all that she’d lost. Or he could be encouraged by all that she’d regained, could take pride at her resolve.

It was an easy choice.

“What should I try this morning besides toast?”

“Do we have eggs?”

“Yes.”

“Bacon?”

She glanced in the refrigerator. “Yes.”

“You can’t get much more traditional than that.”

She agreed with a nod. As he lit a fire in the fireplace, she gathered ingredients and equipment on the island. Her concentration as she worked was extraordinary, as if the fate of the free world depended on the quality of this meal. Even with all that effort, the eggs were runny, the bacon charred or undercooked. She’d put the toast in when she’d started the bacon, so it was cold long before the strips were done.

They sat in the rockers in front of the fire, their plates on their laps, coffee on a small table between them. Maggie moved the eggs on her plate with a fork, then gave a glum sigh. “I used to be a wonderful cook. Everyone said so. I even thought about opening my own restaurant.”

“You did?” It was news to him. He didn’t know she’d had any interest in restaurants besides eating in them regularly.

“For a while. I even went so far as to scout out locations and plan a menu.”

“I never knew.”

Maggie shrugged. “You don’t invest in restaurants, and at the time, you weren’t very invested in me.”

Though he wished he could dispute the accuracy of her response, he couldn’t, not truthfully. “Why didn’t you give it a shot?”

“Frankly, I didn’t think our marriage could survive both of us up to our necks in business matters.”

“It’s not too late. As I recall, Bethlehem has a couple of places downtown, a steak house, and the restaurant at the inn. They’d probably be happy with someplace new.”

“Great. I find a good market, and I can’t even fry bacon.”

“So … you want to feel sorry for yourself?”

She gave him a long, wry look before shifting her gaze to the windows. “No. I want to go out.”

“Out as in outside or out into town?”

“Into town.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“To a—a—” She grimaced, and her cheeks turned
pink. “A place that sells flowers and bulbs and—and gardening things.”

“A nursery,” he supplied quietly.

“Nursery.” She repeated it softly to herself, as if doing so might ensure that she wouldn’t forget again. “I want to go to a nursery.”

“Why don’t you check the phone book for one?”

With a look around, she spotted the phone above the built-in desk near the fireplace. The phone book was on its side in a cubbyhole underneath, a slim volume only a fraction of the size of the Buffalo directory. She flipped through the Yellow Pages, passed the N’s, and returned. “There’s only one,” she said after a moment’s scrutiny. “Melissa’s Garden. On Eighth Street. Do you have any idea where that is?”

“The street on the side here is Fourth.”

“So Eighth is four blocks in one direction or the other.”

Ross nodded. “What are you looking for?”

“Bulbs. Irises, tulips, daffodils.”

“Isn’t it kind of late for planting flowers?” The instant the question was out, he wished he could call it back. Before the accident, he would never have questioned her knowledge of anything. But she’d awakened from the coma knowing nothing about a lot of common, everyday things. His careless question was now making her wonder whether she knew anything about gardening.

For a moment she looked as if the insecurity might win. Then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, and the determined look came into her eyes. “I don’t know. But the Winchesters said if the ground
can be worked, then it’s not too late, and they’re across the street, planting, right now.” A faint humor crept into her expression. “What can go wrong? Bulbs are forgiving. Even if you plant them upside down, they grow down an inch or so, then turn and come up anyway.”

“Then get your coat while I take care of the fire.”

He hadn’t even reached the fireplace, when the phone rang. Maggie’s jaw tightened as she passed it. “It’s for you.”

She was right. It was Lynda, looking for someone to vent her frustration on. With the phone balanced between his shoulder and ear, Ross half listened while he banked the fire and moved the metal screen into place.

“You have to do something, Ross,” Lynda finished in a hot-tempered rush, “or he’s going to blow this whole deal. You have to talk to him.”

He wavered. It would be so easy to agree, to tell her to call Tom to the phone, to mediate this dispute just as he’d mediated countless others. But if he did, then Lynda would have just one more question. Tom would want his input on one other issue, and before he knew it, it would be as if he’d never left the city.

“I’m not going to talk to him for at least a few more months,” he said, hoping he sounded more determined than he felt. “You two are in charge, remember? Work it out. And don’t call me again unless it’s an emergency.”

Lynda was stunned into silence, and he took advantage of it to hang up, then joined Maggie at the porte cochere door. She looked surprised. “Let me mark this day on the calendar. For the first time in history, Ross
McKinney finished a business call in under two minutes.”

“I’m on an extended vacation. Don’t you know what that means?”

“Yes. It means you spend a lot of money to travel someplace new and exotic so you can do exactly the same work you would be doing at home if you were there.”

He paused before opening the door. “That’s not fair. We took some real vacations.”

“Name one.”

“When we went to St. Thomas.”

“Work.”

“London.”

“All work.” She began ticking off destinations on her fingertips, speaking in a tone he couldn’t quite read—not friendly, but not really antagonistic either. “Paris—work. Rome—work. Tokyo—work. Tahiti—work. Birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, even Christmases—work.”

“What about …”

When his voice trailed off, she shook her head. “Work. Always. Do you remember our twelfth anniversary?” She paused for the briefest of moments, obviously not expecting him to. “I told you I wanted to go someplace really isolated, where we could be alone, where we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

Sparked by her words, the memory came slowly into focus. “And I picked a very small resort on a very private Caribbean island.”

“There were no phones, no televisions, no cars, no planes. We had to take a boat to the island and a horse-drawn
carriage from the dock to our cottage, where you immediately plugged in your notebook computer, hooked it up to your cellular phone, and proceeded to take care of business the entire time we were there. You were in this beautiful, romantic place with your wife, and you never walked on the beach, never went for a swim, never had drinks in the lounge with the rest of the guests. You were obsessed with work, Ross. It dominated your life.”