Donovan's Child (13 page)

“What are you telling me, really?” His tone was as cutting and cruel as it had ever been. “You're afraid you can't handle it? You're just not up for supervising the construction phase?”

“Oh, I can handle it. Not nearly as well as
we
can, as a team. But well enough to get the job done, especially if Ruth Gilman has my back.”

“Then there's no problem.”

“Yes. There
is
a problem, the one you keep refusing to talk about. Whether or not I can handle it isn't the question. It was never the question. The question is what's holding you back, what's keeping you from carrying through on the commitment you made?”

He refused to answer her. Instead, he insisted, “There is no point in going on about this. I explained the situation to you the day you got here. You stayed, and by staying you accepted those terms.”

“But I only—”

“We're done here.”

“But—”

“I said, we're done.” He took his napkin from his lap and dropped it on the table next to his half-finished meal. And then he backed and turned and wheeled away from her. She watched as he disappeared through the arch into the front room.

With a discouraged little sigh, Abilene sagged in her chair. She gazed glumly down at her barely touched meal.

So much for how far she and Donovan had come together.

 

Donovan wheeled fast down the hallway until he reached his own rooms. Once he rolled over the threshold, he spun the chair around, grabbed the door and gave it a shove.

The door was solid core, very heavy. When it slammed, it slammed hard. The sound it made was supremely satisfying to him.

But the satisfaction didn't last.

He pulled a second wheelie, spun the chair again and ended up facing the sitting room fireplace. As well as the portrait hanging above it.

Elias.
At two. Before Donovan even really knew him. Wearing some ridiculous little sailor-boy suit Julie had put him in, sitting on a kid-size chair, one plump leg tucked beneath him, clutching his favorite Elmo doll, his chubby face tipped back, laughing at something the photographer—or maybe Julie—must have said or done.

Sometimes, when Donovan looked at that picture, he could still hear the sound of his son's happy laughter. But not often, not anymore. As the years went by, the sound, when he did hear it, seemed to get fainter. A bright, perfect memory fading by slow, painful degrees.

He turned from the portrait, and his defensive fury at Abilene drained away, leaving him feeling foolish and petty and weighed down by regrets. Wheeling on into the bedroom, he avoided letting his gaze fall on the framed snapshot by the bed, of Elias at the beach. Instead, he
went on into the bathroom. He turned on the water in the deep, jetted tub and stripped.

The water welcomed him. He sank into it with a long sigh. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about what a jerk he was being, about the evening he might have been having, in Abilene's bed.

 

Abilene called her mom that night.

She told Aleta Bravo more about Donovan than she'd ever felt comfortable revealing before, including that he used a wheelchair—and that she cared for him. A lot. More so, each day.

Her mom was great, as always, accepting and supportive. She said she hoped she'd be meeting Donovan soon.

After talking to her mom, Abilene called Zoe, who instantly confessed she'd made Dax tell her everything that Donovan had said to him earlier that day.

“Dax tried to get him to come and visit us,” Zoe said. “Donovan never quite got around to giving him an answer on the invitation—and he didn't invite us out there to West Texas to see him, either.”

“I know. Donovan told me, tonight, during dinner, that Dax had invited him for a visit. And then we had a big fight about it.”

“A fight?”

“Long story. Too long—and way too complicated.”

“Ab, why do I get the feeling that there's more going on with you two than this fellowship you waited so long for?”

Abilene busted herself. “There
is
more. A lot more.”

Zoe said nothing for a moment. And then, when she did speak, she sounded nothing short of philosophical. “Well, I guess I knew this would happen.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, come on. You've been talking about Donovan McRae for years. You idolize him.”

“I idolize Mies van der Rohe, too.” Van der Rohe was one of the great pioneers of Modern architecture. “But that doesn't mean I want to get intimate with him.”

“Isn't Mies van der Rohe dead?”

“Oh, very funny. You know what I mean.”

“So…how serious is it?”

“It feels serious to me. But it's all new, you know?”

“What about kids? Does he want them?
Can
he…?”

“Wait a minute. Didn't I just say it's all new? Do we need to jump right to whether or not he can father a child?”

“You just said it feels serious. And it
is
an issue you would have to deal with—I mean, if you want children.”

Abilene sighed. Really, the question didn't strike her as all that rude and tactless, given that it was coming from Zoe. After all, Dax had once sworn that kids and married life were not for him. Zoe had taken him at his word.

And that had created no end of problems between them, as Zoe had come to discover she did want children. Very much.

They'd worked it out and ended up together. And they were expecting their first, a boy, in May. So the big question of having babies—or not having them—was front and center in Zoe's mind.

“Ab, you still with me?”

“I'm here.”

“Well?”

Abilene gave in and told her what she wanted to know. “The accident only affected his legs. So yes, as far as I
know, he
can.
And yes, I do want kids. And next you'll be asking me if I really think I can deal long-term with a guy who uses a wheelchair.”

Zoe made a humphing sound. “No way. I know you. You can deal with anything you set that big brain of yours on accomplishing. If you were a wimp or a quitter or prone to being overwhelmed, yeah, I might ask. But you? Uh-uh—and will you get him to come to SA, please? I want to meet him.”

“I'm working on that. So far, as I think I mentioned, it's not going all that well.”

Zoe laughed. “You'll make him see the light. I have total faith in you.”

“Tell that to Donovan.”

“I will, you can count on it—I mean, after I get to know him a little, once you get him to come to SA.”

“He says he won't.”

“You'll talk him into it. And keep me posted?”

“Will do,” Abilene promised. She asked how Zoe was feeling.

“I feel great. You should see me. I actually look pregnant now. It's about time, I guess, almost six months along. And he's started kicking. I think he plans to be a football star.” She sounded so happy.

But why wouldn't she be? She had a husband she adored, a baby on the way. And she also worked with Dax, at his magazine,
Great Escapes.
She loved her job. Zoe, the one who could never settle down and stick with anything, had finally found the life that suited her perfectly.

The conversation wound down after that. Zoe said goodbye.

As Abilene got ready for bed, she found herself thinking of Donovan's son again—the son he had never so
much as mentioned to her. She'd spent nearly a month working closely with him. She'd made tender, hot love with him last night—and still he hadn't said one word about the lost Elias.

Plus, there was the argument earlier, at the dinner table. She hated that she couldn't get through to him, make him see what he really did need to do. But more than that, she hated that his ultimate solution to a heated disagreement had been to simply wheel away.

She'd told Zoe that this thing with Donovan felt serious to her. And it did. But maybe to Donovan, it just didn't.

It hurt, to consider that he really might not care all that much about what was going on between them. It hurt her heart—and her foolish pride.

In the bedroom, after she'd put on her comfy sweats and brushed her teeth, she considered getting under the covers. But no way would she sleep.

She got some paper and a pencil and did some sketching—just kind of doodling, fooling around with ideas for houses and various other structures she might someday actually get a chance to build. When that got old, she put on some sneakers and went to the kitchen, where she dished up a slice of Anton's blackberry cheesecake. She carried the dessert into the dark studio, turned on all the lights, sat down at her desk and powered up the computer.

For a while, between bites of the creamy treat, she worked on the text of her proposal for the Foundation people. It was descriptive writing, designed to promote the project, to impress the client—in this case, to convince the Foundation that she knew what she was doing, with or without a master architect to guide her.

It didn't go well. Her mind kept wandering, as it had
back in her rooms, to thoughts of Donovan. It seemed she couldn't escape him.

So she switched to the drafting board and her pet project, the one she always turned to when she was troubled or in need of distraction. She had hundreds of drawings of this particular structure already, of varying exterior views, of every room seen from every angle. It was her Hill Country dream house, the one she fantasized about building someday, for the husband and children she didn't have yet.

Sometimes she drew it as a rambling craftsman-style structure; sometimes it had a log cabin exterior. The floorplan kept changing, too, over time. Currently, her dream house was forty-seven hundred square feet—two thousand nine hundred downstairs, and eighteen hundred up. It had a vaulted great room with a floor-to-ceiling natural stone fireplace at one end and a formal dining room at the other. The built-in media center and carved double doors separated the great room from the home office, which had the same wide-plank floors and extensive built-ins. The kitchen, with walk-in pantry, center island and snack-bar counter, opened to a sky-lit second kitchen—an outdoor kitchen—with its own cooktop and oven and corner fireplace.

She was rethinking the purpose of a small interior section between the four-car garage and the outdoor kitchen, when Donovan said, “You're working late.”

Her hopeless heart lifted. She glanced up to see him sitting in the doorway at the far end of the room—the door nearest his own desk. “Not working, just…daydreaming, really. Daydreaming on paper.”

He rolled the chair, first back a few inches, and then forward, stopping in the center of the doorway, pretty much right where he had started. As if he hesitated to
enter his own studio. “I went to your rooms first.” It was a confession. “And then I tried the kitchen. When you weren't in either place, I figured maybe here…”

“Ah,” she said, a warm glow flowing all through her at the thought that he had come to find her, that he
did
care about her, at least a little. And yet still, she wasn't going to prompt him. If he had something to say to her, he was going to have to get the words out all by himself.

Finally, he did. “I'm sorry, Abilene. I didn't want to hear what you had to say at dinner. And when you wouldn't give up and quit talking about it, I wheeled out on you. That was a crappy thing for me to do.”

It was a step. A rather large one, actually. “Your apology is accepted.” She turned her attention to her dream house again.

“May I see?”

She didn't look up. “Sure.”

He entered the studio and wheeled down the length of it, rolling around the outer edge of her drafting table and stopping at her side. “A house…”

“My dream house,” she said. “Someday I'll build it. Ideally, in the Hill Country.”

He took a few seconds to look over the drawings she'd done that night. “Not bad.”

She stuck out an elbow and poked him in the ribs. “Kissing up much?”

“I never kiss up when we're discussing architecture—what's this?” He bent closer. “A dog shower and grooming station?”

“I just thought of that. It's off the garage. Very convenient.”

“Do you have a dog?”

“I intend to. Big dogs. Several—well, at least two. And a couple of cats, as well.”

“Where's the cat grooming station?” He leaned her way—just enough that she felt his arm brush hers. She caught a hint of his scent, clean and earthy at once, a scent that stirred her, made her think of the night before, of what they'd done in his chair—and later, on the tangled sheets of her bed.

She looked at him then and saw that he was watching her, his gaze intent. All at once, the air between them felt electric, charged with promise. She said, with a slight huskiness creeping in, “Cats don't need one. They groom themselves.”

He leaned a little closer. “I do like your dream house.”

She only nodded. And it came to her that from now on, whenever she imagined her dream house, it would be with him in it.

And that was just beyond depressing. If it didn't work out with him—and it most likely wouldn't—she would have to dream up some other house to build for the man who
could
love her, and the children they would have together.

Really, she was carrying this whole thing between them too far—and too fast.

His eyes had changed. They were suddenly sad. And a million miles away. “It looks like a great place to raise your children.”

“Well, yes. That's the dream….”

He caught her hand, brushed his lips against her knuckles. She felt that light kiss so deeply, in the core of herself.

Oh, I am going down,
she thought.

Going down and fading fast. Just the touch of his lips against her skin and she was done for, finished, gone.