Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (170 page)

“
I’m sorry,
Andrea.”

The older woman smiled. “So was I. We had
such good fun.” She shook her head. “It took me a long time to get
out in the world again. By the time I met Walter, it was too late
for me to have children. And Walter, well, he was so elegant, it
was hard to imagine that he could have fit children into his life
anyway.” Andrea shrugged. “Walter was a lawyer, and we knew Nate
and Eliza as vague social acquaintances. We’d pass at parties and
so forth. Pleasant people, I was always struck by how much in love
they obviously were.”

“
It was about a year after
Walter died when I heard through the grapevine that Eliza had died
suddenly of an aneurism. It was disappointing news - they were such
a happy couple that I had a hard time imagining Nate on his own,
even though I didn’t know him that well. They were always so
inseparable, you know?”

Lilith nodded.

“
I found out later that
Nate had a nearly impossible time with the concept himself. I’m
sure he blamed himself more than he ever admitted to me. Nate
believed he could fix anything, that an ounce of prevention was
worth a pound of cure. It must have appalled him to have the love
of his life swept away from him so suddenly and irrevocably. He
missed her terribly.”

“
Yet you married
him.”

Andrea patted Lilith’s hand again. “Oh,
don’t be getting misty-eyed for me. I loved Nate and he loved me,
but it’s different each time. The part of his heart that he had
given to Eliza was hers forever - the part he shared with me was
something she had probably never seen. It might have been a part of
him that came to light only when he lost her.”

Andrea shrugged. “He could probably say the
same thing about me. But if we didn’t change over the course of our
lives, well, we wouldn’t be learning much from life, would we?”

She paused for a moment, then frowned
slightly. “It shakes your universe to lose a great love, and I saw
evidence of that in Nate. He was determined to live for the moment,
to savor every bite the world offered. It was three years after
Eliza’s death that we crossed paths at a charity dance and it is
some commentary on the man’s charm that I didn’t dance one dance
that night.”

“
You said you love to
dance,” Lilith said with a chuckle and Andrea grinned.

“
Oh, Lilith, it was
absolutely wonderful. Like it was destined to be. Nate made me
laugh at some silly joke, I looked into his eyes and I saw the way
they twinkled. Something happened in that moment, something
magical, and I knew before we said another word that I was going to
see a lot of Nate Davison from that point on.” She smiled into her
lemonade. “He had a way of making you feel as though you were the
very center of the universe, or at least of his universe, that you
were the sun and the moon and the stars.”

Lilith could certainly see the same
tendencies in Nate’s son.

“
And I liked him very
much.” Andrea licked her lips and studied her glass. “I have to
admit that there were times when I wished I had met Nate sooner,
but then, neither of us would have been the people we were at that
ball on that night.” She shrugged. “And maybe then, there would
have been no spark. I don’t know.”

Andrea took a deep breath. “I do know that I
loved Nate right through to the bone, that we could talk and talk
about nothing or about everything. I loved how we had champagne in
bed just because it was Tuesday, how we made love anywhere we felt
like it.” She grinned in recollection and Lilith smiled with
her.

“
I loved how he brought
flowers and never really stopped courting me. You see,” Andrea
smiled sadly, “I had learned how fleeting the good moments can be,
too. We took every single moment we had and made them count, we
lived those five years with an intensity that most people don’t
match in the sum of their whole lives.”

“
It sounds
wonderful.”

Andrea sobered, her gaze on the children.
“It
was
.”

Then she swallowed a gulp of lemonade and
Lilith let Andrea take a minute to compose herself.

“
I’m telling you this,
Lilith, so you understand the world Mitch was raised in. He knew
nothing but love and harmony as a child, of giving and laughing, of
perfect partnership and love everlasting. Nate and Eliza were
smitten on sight, as the story went, and were together virtually
from that moment on. They were
happy
. Mitch grew up
believing that was how all marriages were - he never knew any
different. He never realized that he was used to a Rolls Royce
until he found himself in a much more basic model.”

“
With Janice?”

“
With Janice.” Andrea
looked as grim as Mitch could. “I have no doubt that Mitch swept
her off her feet, that she felt like she was the center of the
universe. Mitch is a great deal like his father and he had learned
so much of love and giving in that household. The difference was
that Janice only
took
and Mitch only
gave
.”

“
Over time, that kind of
deficit gets difficult to manage. It’s like buying everything on
credit cards and never paying the balance, just the minimum
payment. The debt mounts and mounts, until your whole life
collapses around you like a house of cards.”

Andrea looked Lilith in the eye. “Love
shouldn’t be that way and neither should marriage.”

She sipped her lemonade. “I find hard to
believe that Nate never saw the truth, but maybe he just didn’t
want to notice it. Or maybe he didn’t want to comment on it. He was
a tremendously loyal man - it would be like him to believe that
since marriage was forever, that time would put the balance back in
Mitch’s marriage.”

Andrea frowned. “But I never believed it and
I never liked that Janice. You could see the hunger in her eyes -
she’d gobble up the whole world for herself given half a chance.
And by the time I came along, she was getting miserable. The Queen
of the May did not have the exclusive attention of her courtier and
she didn’t like it one bit. But she wasn’t overt about it - maybe
only another woman would see the signs. And Mitch, of course - she
made sure he never missed it.”

Now Lilith was intrigued. “What do you
mean?”

“
I remember a dinner party
thrown for an old friend of Mitch’s - a friend who just happened to
be a woman. Charming girl, you could see at a glance that she and
Mitch would never be more than friends. She was going to Europe for
some plum job, destined to be gone for a decade. Her parents were
great friends of Nate’s, but had moved to a condo and didn’t have
the space, so we hosted a black-tie farewell party.”

“
Well! Janice came in a
dress that nearly spilled her breasts onto the table. They were
fine enough breasts, though we all really didn’t want to see them.
But she couldn’t risk sharing Mitch’s attention, even for an hour.
And that wasn’t the worst of it.

“
Janice was so jealous that
Mitch might pay attention to something other than herself, that she
never left him alone that night. She ran her hands all over him,
she pinched his butt when we went in to dinner, she was hanging on
him every minute. It was terribly embarrassing. I spread a rumor
that she was drunk.” Andrea shrugged. “What else was I going to do?
People were noticing.”

“
I sat them opposite each
other at dinner, to deliberately give Mitch a bit of breathing
room, and his friend by his side so they would
some
chance
to talk. Yet during the meal I couldn’t help but notice that Mitch
was looking particularly uncomfortable. He was very quiet and he
had that beleaguered look.”

Lilith smiled. “I know that one.”

Andrea nodded sagely. “So, I went to check
on dessert - completely unnecessarily, of course, we had excellent
staff - and just happened to walk down that side of the table.” She
straightened indignantly. “Janice had her toes in Mitch’s lap! I
could see his napkin moving, as no doubt did everyone else on that
side of the table. I could have smacked her silly! And do you know
what happened later?”

Lilith shook her head.

“
They stayed the night. Of
course, we had plenty of room, and gave them the spare room with
ensuite. I
thought
they were going to need some privacy,
after that performance! I thought I heard arguing, but then
remembered what it was like being young and hot to trot.” Andrea
smiled. “I shut the door to our suite and didn’t pay much
attention.” Her smile faded. “But in the morning, Mitch was asleep
in his father’s study, still in his tux.”

Andrea looked Lilith in the eye. “She didn’t
want
him. She was only teasing him to keep him from giving
his attention to somebody else. That’s just how she was. Mitch
never knew I saw him there, for he took pains to slip back upstairs
and emerge as though he had been in that bedroom all night.” Andrea
grimaced. “Loyal to the end. Janice might have been pulling his
chain, but he wasn’t going to give anyone any reason to malign
her.” She took a swig of lemonade. “I never told Nate.”

“
Why not? Maybe he would
have talked to Mitch.”

Andrea shook her head. “If you think Mitch
is reticent about emotional matters, you should have seen Nate. And
Nate was a consummate family man, too. Divorce really wasn’t in his
personal vocabulary, even though he was a lawyer. It would have
broken his heart to know what was going on there - and even I only
had a glimpse of it.”

She stared into her glass and smiled
slightly. “But you have to wonder if there is some kind of divine
plan. You see, Nate died while Janice was pregnant with Jason. He
was very pleased about the pregnancy, with the prospect of a
grandchild. And Mitch was relieved and excited, too. People have
this great faith that the presence of children alone can mend
gaping rifts in relationships, but it just isn’t so.” Andrea
sipped. “If things are bad, the arrival of a bundle of joy makes
things worse.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
It’s not easy having
little ones underfoot. They’re demanding, they don’t sleep for nice
eight hour stretches, they can’t do anything for themselves.
They’re a lot of work, particularly at the beginning, and when
couples get frazzled and tired, even the most healthy relationship
will show strains.”

Andrea sighed. “I’m glad that Nate missed
all of that, I wish Mitch could have. Even the last trimester after
Nate died was rotten business. It would have broken Nate’s heart to
hear Janice’s tirades about how fat she was getting, never mind her
refusal to eat properly for the sake of the baby. She nearly made
Mitch crazy, but then, she had his undivided attention that way,
which was probably the only thing she wanted.”

“
That’s hardly fair to the
baby,” Lilith said softly, thinking of how Mitch would have
worried.

“
No, it’s not. I fret
myself silly. Yet someone somewhere blessed them with a perfect
little boy, despite all the foolish things Janice had done during
those nine months. She was very lucky, but she didn’t see it that
way. Not at all. When I visited at the hospital, I watched Janice.”
Andrea swallowed. “I saw her malice when Mitch showed us his son,
there’s nothing else you could call it. Mitch was so delighted, so
tickled with this little boy - and fairly so! - that he never saw
Janice’s expression when she realized she was always going to have
to share. I was very afraid that there was going to be
trouble.”

“
Was she cruel to
Jason?”

“
No.” Andrea frowned.
“Surprisingly not.” She smiled. “For some reason, Janice was an
exemplary mother, if rather an unaffectionate one - maybe that was
her tack to get Mitch’s approval for those couple of years. I don’t
know, but everything really did seem to settle down. When she got
pregnant again and they said it would be a girl, she seemed
pleased. I thought she might bond better with a girl, so when Jen
was born, I took Jason for a few weeks.”

Andrea smiled. “I think every pot in my
kitchen had a spin around the floor, he worked every clasp on every
purse and figured out every baby-proof device in the place.
Tupperware fascinated him - I can still hear his chortles when he
managed to make it close with a burp. We were having quite a lot of
fun, Jason and I, until Janice pulled her stunt.”

Andrea’s lips drew to a thin line. “Clearly,
things were much worse than I had ever imagined.”

She cleared her throat. “You see, Janice was
a taker of the first order. She never understood the golden rule,
that everything you give comes back to you a hundredfold. The great
irony of all of this is that if she had given just a tiny bit to
Mitch, she would have been showered with more love and attention
than even she could have handled.”

Andrea met Lilith’s gaze. “She truly would
have been the center of his universe for all time, because if
nothing else, Nate taught Mitch how a man should love his wife. But
Janice only saw what was in it for her, and she missed the greatest
prize of all.”

Andrea shook her head abruptly. “I’m still
angry with her,” she confessed. “I’m still angry that she hurt
Mitch so badly, that she left him believing that it was his fault.
I’m not proud of that, but it’s unfair that Mitch blames himself
for her selfishness. It’s unfair that he gives and gives to his
kids, but doesn’t dare to expect anything for himself. Janice
taught Mitch that - and it’s a lot less than he deserves. She’s
still
got him all trussed up and oh! It makes me
furious!”