Jennifer Greene - Wintergreen

He wasn’t in the kitchen when she came out of the bathroom, for which she was grateful. Except for some wine and a little brandy, she didn’t stock much liquor in the house, and had no desire to be caught standing on a chair fetching the wineglasses. She was just putting the chair back in place when he showed up in the doorway. “The place looks like you, Misha,” he commented lazily. “Ten thousand plants and a dozen half-read books and all soft colors-”

“I don’t understand it,” Lorna admitted wryly. “When I look at a decorating magazine, I always love the spacious, serene stuff, yet my own house ends up thoroughly cluttered.” She tried to twist the corkscrew into the dusty bottle she’d found in the bottom cupboard.

“I’ll do that.” His hands closed on her hips, and he shifted her so he could work at the counter; she stared at him, startled at the slight intimacy. He glanced at her with just the faintest hint of a smile. “You haven’t gained any weight.”

“A few pounds.”

“Upstairs, then. There’s nothing extra downstairs.” He turned his attention to the wine bottle as she determinedly made a big business out of getting dinner ready, totally flustered by the comment. After Johnny was born, she had…developed. But Matthew had always been extremely proper in anything he’d ever said to her. She was surprised that he’d even noticed…

“You’re even more beautiful than I remembered, Misha. And I find that hard to believe.” He turned to offer her a glass of wine, his dark eyes expressive, yet unfathomable. “You were totally oblivious to it back then,” he said quietly. “You didn’t seem to know how beautiful you were. How special.”

She took the glass and gulped down half of the wine. So much for composure and poise, she thought idly, and refused to look at him. Stop feeling unhinged, she told herself. “You’ve done well for yourself, Matthew. I kept expecting to read in the papers that you’d married.” That sounded…wonderful. She gave herself a mental pat on the back. Cool, polite, proper conversation… She finished the wine, set the glass on the counter and put the meat loaf back in the refrigerator.

“Wasn’t that for dinner?”

“The refrigerator heats up faster than the oven,” she said blandly.

“I see.”

She regarded him with a brilliantly cheerful smile, daring him to make a single remark. But there was nothing. Just a wicked pair of dark eyes and another slash of a smile. She took the meat loaf out again and put it in the oven, tried to dredge up some pride for remembering to turn the dial on, and turned her attention to the potatoes. “We’ll have to eat in here,” she informed him. “I’m afraid the dining room’s been converted to an office for me. With only two bedrooms, I had to have a place to work.”

“I saw the foreign dictionaries.”

It took her a moment to figure out why he was rummaging in her refrigerator, until he removed fresh vegetables and lined them up on the counter. Ah, yes, salad. “Matthew, you don’t have to do that-”

He paid no attention. “So you’re working as a translator?”

She nodded, trying not to smile. He had bent down in front of a cupboard and was reaching across the peanut butter to get to the bowls, almost tipping over the flour on the way.

“I had only one skill to sell in the job market when Johnny was a baby,” she explained. “I was fluent in French and Russian because my parents spoke those languages. And I had studied German in school… Well, you know that, Matthew, but I still didn’t have a degree. I started tutoring, and then an electronics firm in Detroit decided to try reaching the European market and I translated some brochures for them. My clientele built up, slowly but surely. Dad helped for a long time. I do a good deal of work for four travel companies, but computer manufacturers are really becoming my bread and butter-there seems to be no end to the software that’s being peddled overseas…”

Why are you chattering on? she thought. He doesn’t want to hear all that. She fell silent, first putting the potatoes in the oven and then rapidly cleaning the counter before setting the table. Matthew was busy shredding lettuce, the sleeves of his starched white shirt now rolled up. “Didn’t your father have life insurance, Misha?”

She nodded. “But I used it to pay his medical bills. I’ve managed,” she said, with a small trace of defiance. “I’ve done fine, Matthew. I make a decent living, and the work allows me to be home with Johnny. It’s just…it simply hasn’t been possible for me to save a great deal of money, and the tuition for this special school for Johnny-”

“I already said you could have the money, Misha. You don’t need to justify its use to me.” His voice was quiet but held a trace of steel in it. He didn’t want to hear or talk about Johnny. He leaned back against the counter, drinking his wine while Lorna finished setting the table. “Between caring for your father and a small child and working, you couldn’t have had much time for a social life.”

She felt a prickle at the back of her neck and glanced up. He was staring at her with brooding dark eyes, his look so possessive that it took her aback. “I can guarantee you’ve had a more active social life than I have over the years,” Lorna said lightly, but there was steel in her voice, too. If he was trying to imply that she had little chance to be promiscuous…

“No, Misha…”

Gently, his palm brushed her cheek, but whatever he had been about to say was interrupted by four feet two inches of energetic towhead slamming through the back door. “Hi, Mom!” Johnny offered her a token peck on the cheek, in between kicking off his boots, chewing on a thumbnail, hanging his coat on a hook and never taking his eyes off the stranger for a second. “What’s for dinner?”

“Meat loaf, sweets. Were you good for Freda?”

Johnny made a face. “A perfect angel. Par for the course.”

Lorna smiled, but all she could think was: Be an angel, Johnny. Just this once. She turned to Matthew to make the introductions.

He was finishing the last of his wine in one long gulp, and when he set down his glass his dark gaze captured hers. His shoulders were stiff and his jaw firm. And his eyes were like black ice, their depths unfathomable but the chill unmistakable. Until that moment, Lorna had almost-foolishly, she rebuked herself-managed to believe that Matthew had put the past behind them.

She turned back to Johnny. Her son, unfortunately, didn’t miss a trick. He stepped forward as he had been taught, offering a distinctly grubby hand as he knew he was required to do, but his normally soft gray eyes were wary, his shoulders stiff, and his little jaw as firm as Matthew’s. Whitaker to the core, Lorna thought despairingly.

It was going to be one hell of a dinner.

Lorna reached over to tuck Johnny in, automatically straightening her son’s cowlick as she bent to kiss him good night. “Don’t stay up late,” he ordered her sleepily.

Lorna smiled, flicking out the light next to him. “Sleep well, sweets. I love you.”

“Mom.”

She turned at the door.

“Where’d he come from? You never had him around before.”

“Johnny,” she said patiently, “I explained. He was someone I knew a long time ago-that was the reason I invited him for dinner.”

“Yeah, I know what you said.” Johnny hesitated, mashing back the pillow behind his head. “And he’s okay. He’s got a neat car, and all those stories about criminals and stuff. I mean, I like him fine, but I don’t know about you. He’s a man’s man, you know?”

She swallowed a grin. “No, I’m not sure that I do.”

“You just tell him to go home. You’re tired.”

And that was the truth, she thought as she detoured into the bathroom before facing Matthew again. She brushed her hair into a thick glossy curtain that just touched her shoulders, then sat down on the edge of the porcelain tub and simply breathed. For the first time in hours.

So many conflicting emotions were churning inside her that she felt as though her heart had been put through a blender. It wasn’t that the dinner had been so traumatic; it hadn’t been. Johnny had gregariously taken over the conversation, and once he’d discovered that Matthew was a criminal lawyer, he’d grilled the attorney with all his nine-year-old guile. No amount of softspoken admonishments or maternal kicks under the table had stopped his offensive. Johnny, the spoiled brat, considered it his right to vet any man Lorna saw. His hostility toward and mistrust of Matthew had been instant. The thaw had been marginal.

And Matthew, contrary to what she had expected, had fielded Johnny’s every question and totally ignored her. He took the child’s interrogation seriously and treated him with respect. A stranger might have even thought Matthew relaxed. But Lorna was vibrantly aware of the way the muscle in his jaw continually tightened, of the way he deliberately avoided looking at her, of the absolutely controlled quality of his voice. And when Johnny neatly sidestepped helping with the dishes and ignored Lorna’s request to pick up his toys, Matthew’s black eyes had fired, though he hadn’t said a word.

It was hardly an instant love affair between uncle and nephew. Not that Lorna had expected it to be, but she hadn’t anticipated how it would wrench her heart to see the two of them together. Both hoarded their feelings as if they were gold; both had the same square jaw; both were possessive and protective. Johnny’s right shoulder shifted exactly the way Matthew’s did when he was uncomfortable. They had beautiful, even white teeth. Both had an abundance of arrogant self-confidence, a quality Lorna alternately resented and envied.

Tears threatened suddenly. Matthew was family. He and Richard, Sr., were the only family Johnny had besides her. She stood up, rapidly applying a bit of blusher to her cheeks. She hadn’t been this emotionally exhausted in a long time, and she had no desire to face Matthew again. She knew he hadn’t seen beyond Johnny’s blond hair and freckles. The only conclusion she could possibly draw was that Johnny reminded him of the kind of woman he thought she was or had been. The kind of woman who would be unfaithful less than a year into her marriage, the kind for whom a vow of love meant so little…