When Love Walks In. Suzanne Carey

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      “You mean they’re—” he’d choked off the words “on their honeymoon.”

      “Supposedly the Anderson boy got himself a job up there,” Geraldine Finn had answered sourly.

      For Danny the news had been like a kick in the stomach. Initially his mind had refused to register it. Cate…married…to Larry? he’d thought in disbelief. It’s only been a few months since we spoke our marriage vows!

      True, the towheaded former basketball player for Beckwith High had always had a thing for Cate. Secure in her love, Danny hadn’t minded. He doubted if she’d even realized it. For one thing she’d hardly ever talked to him—just murmured the kind of pleasantries people do when their only connection is the fact that one of them works for the other’s parents.

      She can’t possibly love him, he’d told himself. Not so soon after me. There has to be some mistake. The thought of another man touching her had made him want to go ballistic.

      A mean-spirited comment from his grandmother had only made matters worse. “Good riddance if you ask me,” she’d observed when he didn’t speak. “You’ll find somebody else. The girl’s like her parents…thinks she’s too fine for the likes of us.”

      If so, he’d never seen any sign of it.

      Cutting the call short, he’d punched a fist through one of the flimsy walls in his shabby Chicago apartment as he’d sought an explanation. And failed to come up with one. Cate was still underage, still a senior in high school. He couldn’t imagine her parents letting her drop out to marry anyone, not even Larry with his sterling reputation. They’d wanted her to attend college, be somebody.

      Unless…unless…

      What if she’s pregnant, he’d thought suddenly, and doesn’t know how to find me? That she accepted Larry’s proposal out of desperation?

      They’d been so careful…only slipped up once. Somehow he’d forced himself to calm down and phone Terry Pobanz, one of his high school buddies.

      The affable Terry had sounded as puzzled as he felt. “Nobody around here gets it,” he’d admitted. “They never dated. Then suddenly they’re married and headed for Minneapolis. I always thought you guys…”

      “Yeah,” Danny had replied gruffly. “So did I. They didn’t…have to, did they? Get married, I mean.”

      Terry’s surprise at the question had echoed in his voice. “Not that I know of,” he’d answered. “I haven’t heard anything like that.”

      Bidding Terry goodbye before his friend could ask too many painful questions, Danny had buried his face in his hands. The following day he’d grimly set about making a separate life for himself.

      To his surprise he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, at least in a business sense. He had a penthouse apartment on Lake Shore Drive now, though no one permanent to share it with him. Stocks, bonds and an amazing sum of money in the bank. A top-notch salary complete with profit sharing. Already the promotion that had occasioned his purchase of the Infiniti was ancient history. Shortly before he’d left for Beckwith, Mercator’s CEO had invited him into the company’s inner sanctum and offered him an even juicier plum. When he returned to Chicago, he would put his penthouse up for sale and head for Northern California, to plan, build and take control of a stunning new Mercator complex. It was slated to become the company’s headquarters west of the Mississippi. And he’d be in charge of it. Henceforth, he’d be a Mercator vice president.

      There’d been women in his life, of course. But no one he’d wanted to marry. The truth was, he’d never met anyone who could take Cate’s place in his heart. Maybe seeing her again will set me free, he thought, bending his empty beer can double. Maybe she’ll seem ordinary to me now. I’ll be able to get on with things. Marry and father a couple of fresh-faced kids. Have the kind of happy, close-knit family you see in TV commercials.

      He couldn’t make himself believe it, though. For one thing, he’d learned from a former classmate he’d run into last month in the men’s department at Marshall Field’s that Cate had been a widow for several years. She and her fifteen-year-old son were living in Beckwith. The most elementary of calculations had told him the boy wasn’t his.

      The practical man in him knew that attempting to take up where he’d left off with her could mean setting himself up for a fall. For one thing, she might have a new man in her life. For another, her son might object to him. It was anybody’s guess what, if anything, he’d been told about his mother’s past. It went without saying that her parents would be against it.

      He hadn’t volunteered for the assignment in Beckwith just to worry about what the McDonoughs might prefer. He wanted to see her, dammit. Find out if there were any embers. Ask why she hadn’t written to him. If he didn’t avail himself of the chance, the kind of personal life he wanted would continue to elude him. He would just keep asking the same old questions. Once and for all, something had to be resolved with Cate.

      I wonder if I should call her, he thought. Or let fate decide whether or not we bump into each other. Phoning didn’t seem like a viable option. For one thing, he might get the boy.

      And if she said hello? What would he say then? It would kill him if she hung up on him.

      Bidding Brenda goodbye in the school parking lot, Cate dropped off the fliers at the home of the Save Our Town Committee chairman and ran by her in-laws’ place with some secondhand paperback novels she’d collected for Larry’s father. A once-robust man who was now a shadow of his former self, Russ Anderson spent most of his time these days in a wheelchair in front of the television set. The family breadwinner, his wife, Beverly, wasn’t home yet. According to Russ, she’d gone to the bank to cash her paycheck and on to Clingers’ for the week’s groceries.

      His welcoming hug and usual question, “How’s that grandson of ours?” swam guiltily in Cate’s thoughts alongside fevered imaginings of what it would be like to see Danny again as she drove home.

      Dressed in his newest baggy jeans and favorite leather jacket, Brian was waiting for her when she walked in the door.

      “Hi, Mom,” he greeted her with his most appealing grin. “I was wondering if, um, you could let me have a couple of bucks. Shawn and Bill want me to go with them to Ryersville for pizza.”

      Even before she’d learned he was back in town, Cate had begun to see Danny in Brian every time she looked at her son. They had the same blue eyes, identical heart-tugging grins. The baggy, in-style clothes, the modest earring Brian had started sporting in one ear and the longish, bleached-blond thatch that sat atop his neatly cropped, naturally dark hair like an overturned bowl did little to hide his resemblance to the man who—without knowing it—had cooperated in giving life to him.

      Neither Brian nor his natural father knew of the other’s existence. For her son, Cate realized, the word Dad conjured up the memory of quiet, sweet-natured Larry Anderson, who’d worked full-time in her father’s store at the time of his conception. Friendly but diffident whenever she’d come in, Larry hadn’t given any sign he might be interested in her. At least, none that she’d noticed. Of course, he’d told her later that she hadn’t been paying attention. Whatever the case, she’d been amazed when he’d stepped forward, offering himself as a substitute husband and father after overhearing her parents discuss the “fix” she was in.

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