Danny, Danny, she confessed silently as she parted her lips to admit his tongue. If only you knew how much I’ve ached for this moment. I’ve been sleepwalking through my life without you. Even the joy of Brian’s birth, the pleasure of raising him, have been full of empty places. Just to taste Danny again, to feel his strong, lean body pressed against her, was like knocking on the gates of paradise.
Danny was thinking similar thoughts, though to his knowledge no child had sprung from their lovemaking. Hungering for a family, a woman to love, he’d wanted only her, their babies. She’d been completely out of reach. Yet, with every breath he’d taken, he’d wanted to reconnect. Now Larry wasn’t a factor. Though he still had questions about Cate’s reasons for marrying so soon after her parents had forced them apart, he was willing to ask them in good time, without any preconceived notions about the answers.
Meanwhile, he couldn’t get enough of her.
I’m going to drown in him, Cate thought. Lose sight of what’s best for all the people I love. With a little shiver of apprehension, she realized Danny still fit into that category.
Just then a car went by, slowing as it passed her house. About to release her grip on every hand hold and plunge into whatever Danny suggested, she caught the shape of lights mounted on its roof. Oh, no! she thought. Dean Lawler. If he saw us, he’ll be back to check out the situation. He’s just that kind of person!
“You have to leave…now,” she told Danny, struggling to free herself. “I’m a schoolteacher. And this is still a small town. My reputation…”
“Not until you kiss me again.”
So lovingly that she wanted to weep, his mouth covered hers.
For several seconds she melted into him. Just to touch him again was like food and rest to a starving, weary person. Yet she was terrified of the gossip Dean could start. If Brenda’s soon-to-be ex turned around, came back and tried to hassle them, he and Danny might get into a fight. Dean would radio for backup and they’d end up at the police station. It would be like her worst memory all over again.
Wrenching free for both their sakes, she turned and ran into the house. By the time she’d caught her breath and begun to have second thoughts, Danny was nowhere to be seen. What have I done? she agonized. Chased him away for good? I don’t want that!
Everything in her ached to call him and try to explain. But she didn’t know what to say. Or if he’d had the phone turned on at his grandmother’s place. Like most executives, he probably carried a cell phone. Besides, even if he’d had the regular phone reconnected, its number wouldn’t be the one she remembered.
Somehow she managed to make her way upstairs, take off her robe and slip between the bedcovers. Once there, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking of him. God help me, but I’m still crazy about him, she thought. His kiss still imprinted on her mouth and their son still out with his friends, she shut her eyes and let her memories take her.…
Chapter Two
On the chilly December night she and Danny had chosen to elope, Cate’s father had driven her to Brenda’s house for a sleep-over. As usual, he’d ordered her to keep out of trouble. Meekly agreeing to behave herself, she’d blown him a kiss as he’d driven off down the snow-dusted street—an unaccustomed gesture she would later regret.
Taking Cate’s overnight case and setting it to one side in her living room, Brenda had rolled her eyes in silent exclamation over its weight. For its modest size, the case had been fairly heavy. Convinced that she wouldn’t be able to return to her parents’ house for any personal belongings after eloping with Danny, Cate had stuffed the modest little case full, cramming in extra socks, underwear and a change of clothing, along with as many personal mementos as possible.
She’d also withdrawn a hundred dollars from her savings account, afraid that, if she asked for more, the bank teller would tell her father about it. In a town like Beckwith, everyone knew each other’s business. Adults gossiped about their children as a matter of course. Thinking ahead, she’d decided that, if her father learned of the withdrawal anyway and demanded to know why she needed the money, she’d explain it as cash to buy Christmas presents.
I wish things hadn’t been so complicated, so fraught with difficulty, she thought now, punching her pillow into a more accommodating shape. That my parents had liked Danny—made him welcome at our house. Instead of sneaking around to see each other, we could have dated openly. We’d probably have waited to get married until after I graduated. I might not have gotten pregnant when I did.
Even if they’d made a baby under those circumstances, she believed things would have worked out for them. Of course, Brian, as she knew him, might not have made it into the world. They might have had a different child instead. Though she’d have loved that child just as much, Brian had turned out to be worth every bit of the anguish his conception had produced. Despite his teenage foibles, which she regarded as a passing phase, he was smart, affectionate and loyal, an amazing, wonderful kid.
Meanwhile her what-ifs came down to a single question. She still wanted to know why Danny had abandoned her seventeen years earlier, leaving her alone in such a predicament. Would he have dumped me eventually, anyway, even if our elopement had succeeded? she asked herself. Or would we have been happy together? Why did he fail to come back for me, as I believed and hoped he would?
When she’d gone downstairs to meet him in her side yard earlier that evening, neither of them had broached the topic of how they’d parted. She only knew that he’d seemed to feel the hunger, the unmitigated urgency to reconnect that she still felt. Of course, the heated kisses they’d exchanged might not have meant as much to him as they had to her. Maybe they’d simply connoted the appeasement of long-denied curiosity, a romantic interlude undertaken to add zest to his sojourn in Beckwith.
As she lay there with empty arms and a thousand questions competing in her head, Cate couldn’t keep her thoughts from returning to the past as if they were drawn there by a magnet. Surely it holds some answers, she told herself. Yet she’d gone over the events of the night they’d eloped and then parted a million times, without coming up with an adequate explanation for Danny’s subsequent behavior. Powerless to resist with him so near, just a few miles away at his grandmother’s house, she dove back into the well of remembering.
Jittery over the agitation their elopement would cause and worried that they might not be able to pull it off, Cate had settled with Brenda in front of the Hales’ TV set. The latter had gotten out her Monopoly game to pass the time, and they’d begun to play somewhat distractedly while Brenda’s mother had dressed for her Friday night bingo game.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think the two of you were up to something,” Miriam Hale had observed with an indulgent smile as she’d put on her coat. “You both seem fairly wired tonight.”
According to Cate’s parents, Mrs. Hale, a widow, had been an indulgent, irresponsible parent who gave Brenda far too much leeway.
Guilty as charged, Cate had blushed. With less at stake, Brenda had kept a cooler head. “How can you say that, Mom?” she’d demanded with her usual insouciance. “The worst thing we could do around here would be to cheat at this game. And if we agreed to cheat, that wouldn’t really be cheating, would it?”
Miriam Hale had laughed heartily and shaken her head as she’d picked up her purse. “You think like an attorney,” she’d told her daughter affectionately. “A real Philadelphia lawyer. Too bad I don’t have the money to put you through law school.”
As soon as she’d gone, Cate had leaped to her feet. “I should call Danny,” she’d blurted with a churning sensation in her stomach.
Sudden tears had welled in Brenda’s eyes. “You know I want you to be happy,” she’d whispered. “But the truth is, Cate, I don’t want you to go. We’ll never get to see each other. Can’t you wait until you’re eighteen? You and Danny could stay