14 Valentine Place (10 page)

He glanced outside and saw that snow was falling. Across the street the mail carrier’s truck was stuck in a snowdrift. A neighbor stood on her step shivering as she watched several men try to free it.

Dylan frowned, wondering how he’d ever lived in such a climate. It was a constant struggle with nature at this time of year. As he let the curtain fall back into place, he noticed the photographs his mother had displayed on the table below the window.

They were proof that he had indeed grown up in the Midwest. There was a picture of him in his hockey uniform, a snapshot of him and his brothers building a snow fort, another of his dad ice fishing. As he glanced around he realized that the room was filled with family photos.

Like a visitor to a museum, he examined each one. He picked up a silver frame with a picture of the six of them—Frank and Leonie Donovan and their chil
dren, smiling as they huddled together around the Christmas tree. He and his brothers had had a good childhood. There had been a lot of reasons to smile.

As he set the photo down, he noticed his parents’ wedding portrait. Etched on the frame were the words “Only you, forever.”

His father had certainly made a mockery of those words, Dylan thought as he stared at the picture of a groom gazing in loving adoration at his bride. What bothered Dylan most was that he knew the emotion hadn’t been fake. As a child he’d often seen his father look at his mother with that same devotion. So how could a man who’d been so much in love with his wife do what he had?

It was a question Dylan had stopped asking himself because he didn’t like the answer. He wanted to forget that his dad had been unfaithful to his mother. But no matter how he’d tried over the past thirteen years, the memory of that spring day—when he’d seen his father with another woman—refused to fade away.

Even now he could recall the afternoon perfectly. He was supposed to have been on a road trip with three of his buddies. Four guys in a 1972 Mustang on the highway headed for the Gulf of Mexico. Only they’d never made it past Iowa. The car had literally fallen apart. At odds as to what to do, two had voted to continue on their way, hitching rides. Dylan and his best friend, Kevin, had decided to catch a bus home.

Dylan hadn’t called to tell anyone of his change in plans. His mother and his brothers had gone to visit his grandparents in Wisconsin, which meant only his father would be home. He figured he might as well
hear his father’s “I told you so” face-to-face rather than over the phone, for his dad had warned him not to attempt such a long trip in an old, run-down car and Dylan knew he’d waste no time in reminding him of the fact.

Determined not to ask his father for help, Dylan had hitched a ride home from the bus station. Expecting his dad to be in his office, he used the side entrance, wanting to avoid the inevitable lecture.

Only his father wasn’t in his office. He was in the living room and he wasn’t working on anyone’s taxes. He was in the arms of a woman Dylan had never seen before.

“What are you doing home?” his father demanded, his face paling at the sight of his son.

At first Dylan was too stunned to say anything. He simply took in the scene before him. A man and a woman on the sofa in the family room, arms wrapped around each other. His
father
with his shirt unbuttoned, the woman next to him with only a black bra covering her. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what had been going on.

“I’d better go,” the woman said in a low voice, reaching for her blouse, which had been flung carelessly over the arm of the sofa.

“Dylan, it’s not what you think.” His father, too, reached for clothing tossed aside in the heat of passion.

Dylan knew it was exactly what he thought it was. He felt sick at the sight of his father with a woman who was closer to his age than his parents. As she scrambled to button her blouse and slip her feet back
into her high-heeled shoes, Dylan could think of only one thing. He needed to get away. To forget what he’d seen.

Without a word, he left the house, ignoring his father’s attempts to call him back. There were still six days of spring break left. He wasn’t about to spend them in the same house as his dad.

He’d ended up at Kevin’s. All he told his best friend was that he’d had a fight with his old man. Knowing that Kevin’s would be the first place his dad would come looking for him, Dylan persuaded his friend to head to Texas as planned.

Using money he’d put away for college, he bought two airline tickets and flew to South Padre Island. He spent five days on the beach trying not to think about what he’d unexpectedly walked in on back in Saint Paul.

By the time he returned from spring break, his mother and brothers were home. Although his father made attempts to talk to him alone, Dylan refused to let him. He didn’t want to think about his father’s infidelity, much less discuss it with him.

Yet he was constantly reminded of it. Every day, when he’d see his dad sitting at the dinner table. And when his mother would shower his father with affection, Dylan wanted to scream. But he couldn’t. Because his mother didn’t know what her husband had done. So Dylan suffered in silence.

Until the day he could take it no longer and he confronted his father. He vented all of his anger, all of his frustration, thinking it would make him feel better. It didn’t. Because no matter what his father said
about having made a mistake and promising it would never happen again, Dylan couldn’t forget that the man who’d vowed to love his mother faithfully had betrayed her with another woman.

The affair may have been over for his father, but for Dylan it never went away. As the summer passed and he continued to live with the secret, he felt more and more as if he was part of his father’s lie—and he resented it. He hated living in his father’s house, hated having to take orders from him and hated having to watch him act as if nothing had happened.

Something big had happened, although his mother didn’t have a clue as to what or when. She went blissfully about her job as a wife and mother, unaware of her husband’s betrayal.

Often Dylan thought about telling her the disgusting thing his father had done. He wanted his father to suffer for his sin, yet he knew for that to happen, his mother would have to suffer, too.
That
was something Dylan wouldn’t allow.

So when she’d asked him what the problem between him and his father was, he’d told her he was tired of being treated like a child. It was easier to let her assume that the constant friction was caused by his need to feel like an adult.

Just as he was getting ready to leave for school, Dylan realized he couldn’t go to the same college his father had attended. He didn’t want to be a chip off the old block. He didn’t want to do anything that would further connect him to his father. So three weeks before classes started, he joined the Marines.

When his father had heard what he’d done, he’d
called him into his office. They’d argued. The rest of the family had thought the tension between them had to do with his rebelling against parental authority. Dylan didn’t see any need to tell his mother or his brothers anything different. All he wanted was to be gone, far away from Saint Paul, far away from a secret he wanted no part of.

And he had thought he had forgotten it—until the night his mother had called with the news that his father had had a heart attack. He’d rushed home, the memories of that summer at the forefront of his mind. But when he’d seen his father’s weakened state, that summer ceased to matter. What was important was that he’d arrived in time to talk to his father. Although they’d only had a short time together before he died, they were able to be a father and son one last time. When his dad had asked him if he’d forgiven him, Dylan had answered yes, because he had. Although he still didn’t understand why it had happened.

Dylan set the wedding photo down, wishing that it hadn’t stirred memories of that summer thirteen years ago. Looking at the number of photos his mother had on display of her and his father, he knew she still believed that her marriage had been made in heaven. His father had taken his nasty secret to the grave with him, leaving his mom blissfully unaware of what had happened all those years ago. Only Dylan knew how imperfect their marriage had been.

“What you don’t know won’t hurt you,” a voice in his head said.

Dylan wished he hadn’t known. If only that rat trap of a car they’d taken to Texas hadn’t fallen apart in
Iowa. If only he hadn’t walked in on his father. If only he could be as blissfully unaware of his father’s infidelity as his mother was.

“Dylan?”

The sound of Maddie’s voice had him turning toward the doorway. She stood there in a navy blue jacket with a red scarf wrapped around her neck.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m leaving. Krystal should be home around six-thirty,” she told him, pulling on a black pair of gloves. “Can I help you with anything before I go?”

“No, I’m fine,” he told her.

She nodded. “I left the number of the dance studio on the notepad next to the phone in the kitchen…just in case.”

He nodded. “When will you be back?”

“I get off work at eight, but I’m not coming home. I have a date.”

With Garret’s friend, no doubt. Dylan found himself wondering what kind of man would hold Maddie’s interest. Where would he take her on a date? To a club? To dinner and a movie?

He found himself asking, “With your Jeffrey?”

“He’s not
my
Jeffrey, but yes, I am going with him to a lecture at the university. Gerald Dawber is leading a panel discussion on Shakespearean sonnets.”

Shakespearean sonnets. Was that the way to Maddie’s heart? he wondered. Not that it mattered to him. He had no intention of pursuing her. He was already in the doghouse with his brothers. Garret had warned him to stay away from Maddie, and Dylan knew it was unlikely that Shane would stick up for him should
it be thought he was hitting on a woman Garret regarded as taken.

He’d come home to patch up things with his brothers, not to put a distance between them. As attractive as he found Maddie, he knew that his family would hardly be his champion should he show an interest in her.

“There’s some lasagna in the freezer you can have when you get hungry. All you have to do is pop it in the microwave. I’ve left a note on the counter with the instructions,” she said.

He could see she was all business. She made very little eye contact with him, all her concentration on her preparations for her venturing into the cold outdoors.

Unfortunately, the more distant she was with him, the more intrigued he was by her. He wished she would stay and keep him company. He shook his head, realizing how ridiculous a thought that was. He didn’t need Maddie Lamont to keep him entertained and he was relieved when she said a curt goodbye and left.

Hearing the door slam, he walked to the windows on the back side of the house so he could watch her head to her car. But it wasn’t a car that she climbed into. It was a sporty red pickup. She started up the engine, then got back out to brush the snow from the windows.

Watching her, he wondered about her date that evening. Who was this Jeffrey? He thought back to his father’s funeral and didn’t remember meeting anyone by that name, yet Garret had said he was a close friend.

He discovered he didn’t like the idea of Maddie having a date. Here he was stuck in the house, bored and unable to do much of anything, and she was going to work and going out on a date.

As the sporty red pickup disappeared down the alley, he chastised himself for even giving her a second thought. Normally he didn’t pay attention to women who made it obvious that they had no interest in him.

But was she really as indifferent to him as she wanted him to believe? He hadn’t missed the look that had been in her eyes when she’d touched his arm during his exercises. She’d been as aware of him as he’d been of her.

And how could he not be aware of her when her hair smelled like strawberries? And when her dark lashes lowered provocatively when their eyes would meet.

Having a beautiful woman under the same roof was not something he’d expected to find on his trip home. Yes, it would be tough spending the next four weeks cooped up in his mother’s house, but maybe it didn’t have to be such a long recovery period after all. A smile slowly spread across his face at the thought.

A
NY HOPE
M
ADDIE HAD
that Dylan wouldn’t notice her return vanished when she pulled into the alley behind Leonie’s house. He stood in the snow wearing a pair of work boots, his leather jacket bulging awkwardly because of the sling on his arm.

“You’re back early,” he said as she climbed out of the pickup.

“They canceled classes and closed the studio because of the heavy snow warning,” she explained, wishing he didn’t look so attractive with his stocking hat cocked at an angle on his sun-bleached hair.

“What about Jeffrey and the sonnets?”

She thought she detected a hint of mockery in his tone. “Postponed as well.” She tried to sweep past him, intending to go directly upstairs, but he blocked her way.

“I’m glad you made it home safely. From what they said on the radio, the roads are in terrible condition and there have been a lot of accidents. I was worried about you.”

She didn’t like that his words made her feel warm inside. “As you can see, I made it safely home.” She stepped around him and saw that the walk had been partially shoveled. “You didn’t do this, did you?” She gestured toward the cleared area.

When he reached for the shovel leaning against the house, she knew that he had.

“You’re not supposed to be doing any physical labor.” She tried to grab the shovel away from him, but he refused to let her take it.

“I’m not using my right arm. I’m using my left,” he told her. “It still works. See?” He demonstrated.

Maddie thrust her hands to her hips. “Do you know what your mother would say if she saw you right now?”

He grinned. “Oh, I think I can imagine. Lucky for me, she’s not here.”

Again she reached for the shovel, trying to still his motion. He stopped and stared at her, his eyes holding
a challenge. “You honestly think you can take this from me?”