Heard It Through the Grapevine

What is he doing here?

She’d slept with her arms wrapped around that Box, filled with so many little slips of paper with his name on them. Maybe someone had gotten confused again. Cathie’s handwriting had always been atrocious. Maybe she had a guardian angel who needed glasses or something.

The Matt notes are old notes. I don’t worry about him that much anymore. I try not to even think about him.

The Box remained stoically silent, reverently housing all her secret hopes and dreams, including one, new, desperate plea she’d written that morning, right before he’d shown up, again.

I asked for help. Not him. He’s fine now. Okay, maybe not fine. I’m afraid he’s lonely, and that he’ll never really let anyone love him. But he’s not miserable. He always wanted money and a nice house of his own. I know all that really means to him is a sense of security, which he never had before, but he’s got all that now.

Of course, she didn’t think those things made a person particularly happy. They would help her, in the shape she was in, but she didn’t think happiness was found in a big bank account and a nice house. Matt loved his work. She knew he was well-respected and keenly intelligent, and having people recognize those things meant something to him. If she ever asked for anything else for Matt, it would be that he let down his guard enough to let someone love him, but she wasn’t sure if he had it in him to love someone back. He’d always held himself apart from everyone else. Those were walls she feared would never come down.

She glanced back at the box, because there wasn’t anyone else to talk to at the moment. What do I do now?

If she’d expected a lightning bolt or a booming voice coming out of nowhere, it didn’t happen.

She just kept getting Matt at her door.

She supposed she had to go out there and let him make whatever offer he wanted, while she tried not to argue. He was right—he had made it terribly hard for her to help him, fighting all the way and nearly frustrating her to death. So, she would try not to do that to him. She’d try to just take what he offered, if her pride would let her.

Cathie found him in the kitchen wielding a knife covered with peanut butter. He’d made toast with peanut butter and jam.

“Wasn’t much to choose from,” he said. “And I knew you liked this.”

She’d made it for him ages ago. It had been one of her favorite treats as a child, and it sounded pretty good to her now. Bland, but filling.

“Thanks,” she said, having learned the hard way that she did not want to let her stomach stay empty for long, even if she didn’t feel like eating.

She sat down and nibbled gingerly. Matt sat and watched her.

“Better?” he asked, when she pushed her plate away.

“Yes.”

“So, you saw the guy?”

“Talked to him. He’s, uh…away for the weekend.” That’s what she’d believed. She’d never even doubted it. Was he such a good liar? Or was she just a fool? “Let’s just say I can’t believe I was that stupid.”

“Oh, Cathie. I’m sorry. He’s an ass. Lots of men are.”

She nodded, still having trouble believing how wrong she was. “He seemed so charming, and he was good-looking and all grown-up and sounded so sincere, and I fell for it completely. I believed everything he said, and he didn’t mean any of it.”

“And the baby? Is this boy—”

“He’s not a boy, Matt. He’s a grown man. One of my professors, actually.”

He swore roundly.

“It gets worse.” Cathie turned away, as angry at herself as she was at Tim. “He’s, uh…he’s married. I didn’t know. I swear. I never would have had anything to do with him, if I’d known. I guess they’ve been having some problems and were separated. Or maybe that was a lie, too. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, anyway. She’s been away, but she’s back now and wants to get back together. He offered me money, Matt. To have an abortion. I couldn’t do that.”

“Okay. Forget about him. The guy doesn’t deserve you or your baby.”

“I know.”

None of which changed the fact that she was going to have the man’s baby.

Cathie cleared the table and started cleaning the tiny kitchen, just to have something to do. It was so horrible. She was so ashamed.

“So, what are you going to do?” Matt asked finally, when she couldn’t find anything else to do to keep her from facing him.

“Have a baby, I guess.”

“And then what, Cathie?”

“I don’t know.”

A part of her wanted to run home to her mother and father, but she was about to become a mother herself. Surely that meant she couldn’t go running home to her own mom and dad, expecting them to fix everything.

“I’m really worried about my father,” she admitted. “He’s had a lot of medical tests lately, and no one’s saying why. But I know that means something’s up. With transplants, there are so many things that can go wrong, even after all this time. We’re not supposed to worry him, and he’s going to be so worried. I love him so much, and I’m afraid of what this might do to him, Matt.”

“Yeah, he’s going to worry. What about school? How much do you have left?”

“Year and a half. If I’m lucky, I might make it through spring semester, which would only leave a year, but still…” A whole year left, with a brand-new baby. “I think I really should consider giving this baby up for adoption.”

“Could you do it?”

“I don’t know. But there are people who can’t have children any other way, nice people who love each other and are married and have good jobs. I’m barely getting by. School is so expensive, and if I quit before I graduate, what kind of job will I be able to get? How could I take care of myself and a baby like that?”

“Cathie, I know you. If you give up this child, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. This would break your heart.”

“I know,” she cried. “But what else am I going to do?”

“Let’s deal with one thing at a time, okay? You want to keep this baby, right?”

“Yes,” she whispered. It was a part of her, and as upset as she was at the timing, she’d always known she wanted to be a mother. Her own mother had told her quite seriously that having children was both the hardest thing she’d ever done and the greatest joy of her life.

“You need to finish school,” Matt said. “But that all takes time and money. Time won’t be easy to come by with a baby, but money helps there, too, and let’s take money off the table right now, okay? It’s silly to let that stand in your way when I have more than I’ll ever need, and I’d give you anything you need.”

“Matt—”

“It’s mostly because of your family that I have what I do today. Don’t tell me I don’t get to give something back now,” he insisted. “Your father’s always talking about that, isn’t he? Giving something back?”

She nodded. He had her there.

“So, this is how I get to give you back a little of what your family gave me.”

“Okay, but still—”

“I’m not done. You’re worried that this will bring a lot of stress to your father and put his health in danger?”

“Yes.”

“What else?” he asked.

“I’m worried about this baby growing up without a father.”

“You don’t know this baby won’t have a father. You could find someone you love, someone you trust, and marry him. He could be a great father to this baby. And even if you were married right now, it’s no guarantee that you always would be. The guy could walk away. He could get hit by a bus. Anything could happen.”

“I’m still worried. Your father was never around, right?”

“Right.”

“And how was that?”

“It wasn’t that unusual where I came from. I mean, it’s definitely not the best of circumstances, but lots of kids don’t have fathers.”

“You never knew him?”

“Barely. He died when I was four or five. Got into a fight in a bar. Just a stupid, little thing, but then he was always into some kind of trouble like that.”

“Matt—”

“It’s nothing to me,” he insisted.

“A father shouldn’t be nothing to his child.”

“No, he shouldn’t.”

“Do you ever hear from your mother?”

“Sure. Any time she needs money. She saw something in the paper about my company a year and a half ago and came running with her hand out.”

“Were she and your father married?”

“No.”

“So…did the other kids give you a hard time about that? Did they call you…”

“A bastard?” He grinned and shook his head. “I’ve been called every name in the book, but not necessarily because my parents never married.”

“Still, it’s a big, bad world out there.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Look, I don’t know how things are these days, with so many single parents and divorced parents and all that, but twenty-five years ago when I was old enough to hear it and to ask what it meant, it wasn’t a lot of fun the first time it happened. But it’s far from being the worst thing life ever threw at me.”

“So, that’s not a big consideration, I guess.”

“Well, not necessarily. You’d feel better if you were married?”

“Of course.”

He nodded. “And your father wouldn’t worry so much.”

“No, but that’s not going to happen. Tim’s not going to marry me—”

“I wasn’t talking about that jerk.” He took her hand and held on tight. “Oh, hell, I was thinking… Look, I know it sounds crazy, but…I was talking about me. I think you should marry me, Cathie.”

She gaped at him. “You?”

He nodded. “For the baby.”

Cathie’s heart lurched painfully. For the baby. Of course. She tried not to let him see how this both touched her and hurt her, tried to keep it light. “That would be a bit drastic, don’t you think?”

“Give it a minute. It could work,” he claimed. “We could get married right away. Everyone would assume I was the father of your baby. For all intents and purposes, I would be.”

“What?”

“You want this baby to have a name, don’t you? You don’t want that jerk of a professor of yours to ever have anything to do with your baby.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I have a big house,” Matt went on. “There’s more than enough room for you and the baby. There’s a housekeeper who comes in twice a week, a sweet old grandmotherly type. We’ll have her come full-time to help with the baby while you’re in class. I know you want to finish school. You’ll have to, if you’re going to get back on your feet after this baby comes.”

Cathie stood there mutely. Matt had actually asked her to marry him. She used to dream that he would, but never like this.

“Your parents would buy it,” he went on. “You’ve been here since May. Your mother’s kept sending me over here to check on you, so they know we’ve been spending time together. We’ll tell her we wanted to keep this just between the two of us until we were sure about our feelings.”

“I can’t lie to them like that, Matt,” she said, struggling for any reason she could give him to stop this insanity.

“Will we have to? If we just call them and tell them we’re getting married, they’ll make all the logical assumptions.”

They would. Her parents would never expect her to marry for anything less than love. Still, to tell them she and Matt loved each other, to let them think it…

“It would still be a lie, Matt.”

Oh, please. Let it be a lie. Let her remember all the reasons she couldn’t love him.

Matt’s hand came up to the side of her face, so gently she thought she must be imagining this. He’d never touched her anymore. She closed her eyes, savoring the feel of his touch, as he let his hand linger against her cheek.

“We were good together once, Cathie. Everything was so easy between us. We were the best of friends. Remember?”

“Of course, I remember,” she cried. “You’re the one who forgot.”

He shook his head sadly. The tips of his fingers spread into her hair, his thumb brushing away her tears.

“I didn’t forget,” he said, his gaze locked on hers. “Cathie, you’ve always been special to me. I care about you. I always have. I’m not going to lie and say I love you, because you know it’s not that. But I do care, and I want to help.”

“I know, but…marriage—”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he said. “At least nothing more than we want it to mean.”

She closed her eyes and hung her head down low. Matt’s hand was still on her face, and she felt him ease closer. Gently, he pressed her face against his shoulder and his arms came around her. He stroked her hair, whispered reassurances in her ear, while she wished with every bit of her heart that he could have loved her, just a little.

He was different now. The cool, remote man who’d slipped in and out of her life over the years had been so different from the utterly compelling one who’d shown up at her apartment twice in the last twelve hours. The one who held her in his arms while she cried, offering tantalizing glimpses of the man she always knew he could be.

“Think about all your family’s done for me,” he said. “It’s a debt I never thought I’d be able to repay.”

“Oh.” Of course. This was something he understood, something he believed in. Never take anything from anyone, unless you absolutely couldn’t help it. And if you did, find a way to pay it back. “Matt, my parents helped you because they wanted to, because they came to think of you as part of the family, and families take care of each other.”

“Fine, I’m family, and you’re in trouble. Let me help you,” he said, looking more determined than she’d ever seen him. “Think about the baby, Cath. I want your baby to have everything.”

“Everything you never had?” she suggested. “Is that why you’re doing this?”

“What if it is?” he said. “Look, I’ll be whatever you want me to be to your baby. I’ll be a name on a piece of paper. Someone you share a house with for a few years. Someone who sees your kid every other weekend and on major holidays. Whatever you want, Cathie, I’ll do it.”

“I don’t have any doubts about that.” Not for a second. He would take good care of her baby.

Cathie let out a long, slow breath. Last night, when she’d closed her eyes and tried to figure out what she should do, she kept imagining having her baby, handing it over to someone else and watching them walk away with her baby. The baby was crying, and Cathie was crying as well.

But now she saw Matt, her baby cradled tenderly in his arms.

Cathie’s heart started to thud in a hard, heavy rhythm. Hope warred equally with the urge to protect herself from him and everything she’d ever wanted, not just from him but for him. He needed someone to show him love was real and precious, worth fighting for, worth believing in. Maybe she wasn’t that person, but what if her baby was? What if that was the key to his heart?

Cathie’s mother always said babies were magical creatures, so innocent, so trusting, so accepting, that they could work miracles.

She could try to explain to Matt that he desperately needed someone to love, that his life wouldn’t be complete without it. She believed there was love inside of him, waiting for that one person who could draw it out. And her baby…

Maybe he could love her baby.

Maybe she did have something to give him, after all.

“Look, if it makes you feel any better, we can put a time limit on it,” he suggested. “Three years, Cath. Your parents gave me three years. Think where you and your baby could be in three years.”

That was Matt, practical to the end. If she’d had any illusions it might be something more…

Still, the situation was what it was. She was pregnant, and he was making her a very generous offer. In three years, she could have her degree and a teaching job. She’d have a two-year-old she could put in day-care, if she had to. Not the kind of life she’d imagined, but a lot more than she’d thought she’d have last night.

“Then what?” she said carefully. “We’d just walk away from each other?”

“Sure.”

He probably believed that. That they could live together for three years, and then just walk away from each other. Was she crazy to think he might feel differently before those three years were up?

“Cathie, you’re making this more complicated than it has to be. All we have to do is make it through the ceremony without your family getting too suspicious. Then we come back here, move you into my house and get on with our lives. You can go to school. I’ll go to work. You’ll have your baby. And when this marriage has served its purpose, we’ll end it. That’s it.”

Oh, he did need someone to love. He needed it desperately. Who’d give that to him? Who would he ever let close enough, if not her and her baby?

Matt took her chin in his hand and tilted her face to his. “Marry me, Cathie.”

Her breath caught in her throat, because he was so close, so solidly reassuring, so sincere. She opened her mouth to object one more time.

Matt pressed the pad of his thumb to her lips. “I’ll take good care of you and the baby. I promise.”

Her eyes filled with tears that spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “I know you will.”

Cathie felt the ache deep inside her give way. All of a sudden, the tightness was gone. A feeling of peace came over her. She knew she could safely entrust her life and her baby’s to Matt. Her heart might well be another matter, because she was going to lose it once more to him, if she hadn’t already, just by being here with him and seeing him again.

He had to quit hiding the kind, tender man he could be.

In the end, it was something her father told her that made up her mind.

Her father saw an order and a purpose to everything. He believed people’s lives fit together in exactly the way they were meant to. And then he threw in a little of the philosophy of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. That you didn’t always get what you wanted, but sometimes, you got exactly what you needed.

Cathie had said a lot of prayers in the last twenty-four hours. There’d been a time when she’d tearfully offered up endless, rambling prayers on Matt’s behalf.

Maybe this was her answer to all of them.

“You’re sure?” she said, giving him one last chance to back down.

“I’m sure.” He smiled, the reckless bad-boy smile of his youth. “Say yes, Cathie.”

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Yes.”

Matt fastened his strong arms around her and held her close. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he promised.

And in that instant, Cathie believed him.

She was trembling, so he held on to her for a while. He could take care of her now. Buy her a decent car, and see that she had the best medical care for her and the baby, and that she didn’t have to work for a while. Maybe when they separated, he could find a way to talk her into letting him support her and the baby afterward. He’d never miss a dime of the money, and he liked the idea of her and the baby having it.

Yeah, he’d do that, when the time came.

First, he had to make sure she didn’t back out on the wedding.

“We need to tell your parents,” he said.

She eased out of his arms and looked a little panicked. “I will.”

“No. Now. We don’t have any time to waste, do we?” he asked, glancing pointedly at her midsection. It was hard to imagine Cathie growing big and round with a baby. And then he remembered something. “Christmas is only three weeks away. We can use that as our excuse.”

“Excuse?”

“For getting married so quickly.” She gave a little squeak of distress. “It’s all right. It’s not like we’re going to have a big wedding. And we can’t spend six months planning it, right?”

“No, we can’t. But—”

“Your mother said all of your brothers are supposed to make it home this year, and you’d want to have all of them there, if you were getting married for real, right?”

“Yes.”

“We have to make this look real, Cath,” he said softly, fighting the urge to push even harder. Once she told her parents, that was it. There’d be no backing out. Picking up the cordless phone on the table by the sofa, he said, “Call.”

She looked kind of pitiful, like she might cry some more. “I hate lying to them.”

“It’s not a lie,” he insisted.

The voice of Mary Baldwin rose up inside him. She would definitely think omitting several pertinent facts constituted a lie. He wondered how well she would take the idea of him marrying her daughter.

Matt dialed the number and held out the phone to Cathie.

“I can’t,” she said, shaking again. “You do it.”

He pulled her against his side, so she wouldn’t run away, as Mary came on the line. It was a good thing one of them could tell not-quite-lies so well. That skill was going to come in handy before they were done. “Hello, Mary.”

“Matt? I hope you have some news for me. How’s my girl?”

Here we go. No time like the present. “She’s fine, but she’s going to be my girl. I finally talked her into marrying me.”

No lie there. It had taken a great deal of talking to convince her.

“What?”

“You heard me. She’s going to marry me.”

There were shrieks from the other end of the phone, then tears, then laugher. He’d forgotten how loud the Baldwins could be when they were happy. Before long, Cathie’s parents were both on the line. They didn’t offer a single objection to entrusting their only daughter to Matt, much to his surprise. They welcomed him warmly back into the family, claiming that in their eyes, he’d always been one of them. They’d just make it official now.

“Matt, I need a moment alone on the phone with my little girl, if you don’t mind,” Mary said. “Especially if we’re going to pull off a wedding in three weeks!”

Matt handed over the phone. Cathie pulled her knees to her chest and the phone to her ear.

“Yes,” she said. “If Daddy performs the service, Brett can walk me down the aisle… I love Grandma’s wedding dress. It’s perfect… Whatever decorations are put up for Christmas at the church will be fine. It’s one less thing to worry about… No, just a small thing at home afterward. We just want everyone there.”

She was doing fine. She and Mary would have to work so hard to pull off the wedding so quickly, Mary would hardly have time to ask questions.

And then he heard Mary’s voice say, “You love him, don’t you?”

Oh, hell.

The whole plan would fall apart. Cathie wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.

It got quiet for a minute. He wished he’d taken more time to convince her this was the right thing to do and that it was no big deal. Hell, the house was so big and he worked such crazy hours, he’d hardly ever see her and the baby. And his debt to the Baldwins would be paid.

Cathie looked up at him like he was the only solid thing in her world at the moment. She put a hand to her still-flat stomach, and he held his breath, waiting to hear what she’d say. If she’d just think of the promises he’d made her. He’d meant every one of them. He would be here for her and her baby, no matter what. They could make this work.

You love him, don’t you?

“I do,” Cathie whispered.

Matt nodded, telling her with his eyes that it was the right thing to do, and then he could breathe again, hadn’t even been aware that he’d stopped. Life was so strange sometimes.

A moment later, the conversation was over. Matt took the phone from Cathie’s trembling hand and put it back on the table at his side, then faced Cathie again. “You okay?”

“My mother asked me if I loved you, and I told her that I do. For what you’re doing,” she rushed on breathlessly. “For me and the baby. I do love you.”

“I know.”

He understood exactly what she meant, but found himself remembering the last time he’d heard those words. They’d come from her then, too. She’d been sixteen and mad as hell.

I love you, Matt.

He’d thrown it back in her face, as if the words hadn’t meant a thing to him, as if she didn’t, either. She’d been wrong, of course. Not that it was so surprising she might think she loved him. She loved so many people. Everyone. Nearly everything. She was extravagant with it, as if there was an abundance of it inside of her, and it was nothing to add one more person to the list of those she loved.