Anything for Her - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,77
was for now.
“That’s a hateful thing to say.”
She needed her mother’s blessings for telling Nolan everything, and she wouldn’t be getting it. Mom still wanted to be the endangered heroine of their story, and giving Allie a happy ending would diminish that role.
“Why can’t you respect my judgment?” she asked, her voice suddenly soft, hurt. “I have never loved a man before. I’ve never asked you for permission to tell someone the truth. I have kept your secrets for fifteen years. Do you really think I’m so foolish, I’d trust the wrong man?”
“You know it’s not that!” her mother snapped. “I explained. So much could go wrong. Why take a chance when it’s not necessary?”
Allie gently depressed the button that ended the call. She then turned her phone off.
She sat in her chair beside Sean’s quilt, stretched in the quilt frame, but didn’t reach for her thimble or needle. The deep blue and white blurred before her eyes.
She would be betraying her mother if she followed her heart.
Anger had transmuted into anguish that had her bending forward, hugging herself and breathing fast and hard.
It was a while before she had a moment of clarity. At least she still had her mother.
Both of them had been hurt by Allie’s dad’s defection and then by Jason’s. Mom might only be desperate to know that at least one member of her family wouldn’t desert her. It was hard to believe in other people when the ones who were supposed to love you most abandoned you.
Who knew that better than Allie?
She never did work on Sean’s quilt.
* * *
“WHAT’S THE DEAL with Allie?” Sean asked as he grabbed sour cream and steak sauce from the refrigerator.
Nolan set the platter with baked potatoes on the table. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t see her this weekend, did you?”
“I don’t always tell you when I get together with her.” Nolan checked the steaks he was broiling, decided they were done and grabbed a plate. He was glad to have his back to Sean. “Will you get me a beer?” he asked.
Silence. Reluctantly he turned to find his foster son hadn’t gone back to the refrigerator. He was staring at Nolan.
“What?”
“You hardly ever drink.”
“You know I like an occasional beer.”
“You can tell me it’s none of my business, you know.”
Nolan groaned. “Can we sit down and eat?”
As ordered, Sean got their drinks and joined him at the table. They ate in silence for a good five minutes. Nolan finally broke.
“I’ve had a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
“It has something to do with her saying she lived one place and her mom a difference place, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Nolan admitted. “Like I told you early on, I’ve got a thing about lies.”
“You think she lied.”
The kid was a persistent little bugger, Nolan had to give him that. “It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “I think it was her mother who lied. But there’s something going on that Allie doesn’t want to tell me. I can’t do a relationship where the trust isn’t there.”
Sean pondered that while inhaling baked potato heaped with sour cream. “Allie doesn’t seem like someone who would lie. You know?”
Nolan grimaced. “I know.”
“So maybe...”
“Maybe what?”
The boy’s shoulders moved awkwardly. “I don’t know. Maybe she has to keep quiet for someone else. Or what if she’s scared or something?”
Scared, like her father was? “Scared of what?” The question was really for himself.
“Have you asked her?”
“No. I was hoping she’d come to me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know you’ve guessed something is off,” Sean suggested.
Nolan felt certain Allie was well aware of his doubts and questions. The tension had been there all along; even on their first date, she wasn’t eager to talk about her history.
“You weren’t all that high on me dating her,” Nolan reminded the boy. “What’s with the grilling?”
Some color touched his cheeks and he ducked his head. “She’s cool. It was me, not her. She treats me like a person, not a kid. If she was my girlfriend, I wouldn’t want to screw it up.”
Nolan didn’t want to screw it up, either. Was that what he was doing? In his obsession with honesty, had he blown it with the first and only woman he’d ever thought of the word love in connection with?
“I was your age when I found out my mother had been sleeping around,” he heard himself say abruptly. “The man I’d called ‘Dad’ my whole life isn’t my biological father.”
Sean gaped. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Nolan said grimly. “My brother, Jed, is his