Cupid’s Confederates

you’re-”

“It wouldn’t bother me, because chaos doesn’t bother me, just like odd dinner hours don’t bother me. I can live with an awful lot as long as you’re happy. Only you’re not happy. Your pewter’s been banished to the study and plastic flowers have taken over the living room. I’ll laugh if you will-but I haven’t seen you laughing. Bett, she isn’t sick. She isn’t still grieving the way she was. You’ve had me to back you up, to support you, and you know it. So why the hell are we living in Elizabeth’s house?”

Bett uncoiled from the couch, stiff and hurting and suddenly furious at his even tone. She hadn’t been prepared for knife wounds this evening. She thought fleetingly that she could be married for a million years and never be prepared for a hurt deliberately delivered by her mate. “Come on. You think that’s fair?” she protested. “If our lifestyle’s changed, it’s because you invited her here. All I’ve been doing is the best I know how to-”

“You haven’t done a damn thing but let it happen,” he said flatly. “You know exactly what we value as a couple, what we need as lovers, what the two of us are all about. And it’s really as simple as the lock on the bedroom door that doesn’t exist-but you bought that lock, didn’t you, Bett? It’s in the top drawer of the dresser.”

She swallowed, folding her arms stiffly across her chest. “I could hardly put it on. I knew just how hurt she’d be if she saw it, how horribly embarrassed at the thought that she’d been interrupting-”

“Right. A lock wasn’t the answer. Telling her to handle her own insomnia was. I tried once-and failed. Your mother has a disarming way of being manipulative. But I didn’t try again, because the fact is, two bits, it was your job. She’s your mother. And you’re the one who needs to deal with her.”

He was very still, half in shadow, half in light. Waiting. For what? she thought furiously. “What did you want me to tell her, to stay out because we wanted to make love?”

“Yes.”

“Zach, that’s ridiculous,” Bett hissed.

“No,” he said quietly. “It would just be hard. And that isn’t the same thing as ridiculous at all. What you and I have built together-you have to stand up for it sometime. Now, if you want me to put it all back in order, I will-so fast it’ll make your head spin. This is not your mother’s house. It’s yours. I can do it for you, Bett, but somehow I never thought I’d have to. Do the two of us mean something to you?”

Tears burned in her eyes. “Of course we do,” she said in a low voice. “How could you even ask that? Zach, if you’re demanding that I make her leave-”

He shook his head. “You’re not hearing me at all, honey. I don’t give a damn if your mother leaves or stays. I’m talking about you and me.” He straightened, staring at her. “You’d better think it out,” he said flatly. “Soon.”

He walked past her, and a moment later she heard the thudding sound of his footsteps on the stairs. She couldn’t seem to look away from the blank, empty doorway. The tears dried in her eyes, leaving a salty aftersting. She felt cold. Her fingers curled around her upper arms, rubbing up and down. Zach? So cruel? You haven’t done a thing but let it all happen. Did he think it had all been so easy on her? How unfair could one man be?

Her head ached, and an odd tremor disturbed the even beat of her heart. Fear. Never in the five years of her marriage had she ever considered that Zach might leave her. He hadn’t threatened to leave her now, but it was there, suddenly, the reminder that love wasn’t carved in stone and never came with a guarantee.

Deja vu: She could remember exactly that tremorous heartbeat from when she’d first fallen in love with him. An incredible elation when she was with him, followed seconds later by depression at the thought that she could lose him, followed seconds later by elation again. She’d forgotten about those insane mood swings. Other people in love seemed to exhibit the same psychotic symptoms. But they’d gone away, of course, because once she had the ring on her finger she didn’t have to worry quite so much about that love. Did she?

Where had that horrible lump in her throat come from? Darn it, she was exhausted. And confused. She switched off the lights in Zach’s study and the lights in the kitchen and headed for the stairs. And then didn’t go up. The house suddenly seemed smothering to her. Mindlessly, she grabbed a coat from the front hall closet and let herself out the front door.

Cold wind snatched at her hair and whipped around her cheeks; she gulped it into her lungs. Her legs were in a terrible hurry, walking nowhere. Just down a farm road. A few snowflakes fluttered down, blurring her vision. The uneven earth set obstacles in her path, just small stones and ridges and hollows, but she could barely see in the darkness. She stumbled, yet didn’t slow her headlong pace.

It helped, the rush. Anger bubbled up inside of her, shunting aside the unbearable fear. Zach had asked Elizabeth here; she hadn’t. Did he think there’d be no piper to pay, having someone else in the house with them full-time?

For Bett, there’d always been a piper to pay where her mother was concerned. Resentment and love came in the same package. She’d thought that Zach understood. Just as he’d said, for once in their lives she’d wanted to relate successfully to her mother. Now, when Elizabeth needed her. And that’s all I’ve been doing, Bett thought furiously. Being good to Mom. Loving her. Caring for her. So where exactly was the crime?

She walked and stumbled, walked and stumbled. Out of nowhere, Zach had turned selfish. Men were the pits. Husbands were the worst. She was not Wonder Woman. She was so damned tired she could barely see straight. Exactly what more was she supposed to do?

She walked through the orchards, over the clover hill, past the woods, and finally stopped at the pond, out of breath. The full moon was partially shrouded by clouds, but that faint silver circle still glistened on the icy waters. The cattails were brown now; frogs and crickets had gone to sleep for the winter. Her fingers were so cold she could barely feel them; she jammed her hands into her pockets.

Zach was clearly being a bastard. Unfair, unreasonable, callous, insensitive. Yet that whisper of fear shivered again through Bett’s bloodstream. Fear that came from nowhere. From the wind and the night.

She was so totally different from her mother. She’d tried, so often, to be a Brittany. She’d been trying for almost three months. She’d been miserable most of that time. Just once, she thought fleetingly, she had wanted her mother to say that she understood. The farm, her chosen lifestyle, the zillions of things that made up the person that Bett was. The woman she was.

Winning approval was a game that children played. There must still be some of that child in her, because Bett suddenly saw all too clearly how much she had sacrificed in the past three months, trying to win it. Mothers were such very powerful people. Love wasn’t the only thing that made up that blood tie; there was the intrinsic definition of femininity, of everything it meant to be a woman. A mother spelled out her version of that definition first, before anyone else had a chance.

Tears burst from her eyes suddenly, shocking her, choking her. They kept on coming. She’d tried so damn hard. Damn Zach. How dare he think she hadn’t minded the changes in the household, the loss of their privacy? How could he accuse her of not valuing the love they had? Couldn’t he understand the impossible position she’d found herself in, trying to please her mother, her husband and herself? It was a no-win situation. What on earth did he expect her to do?

What she’d been doing was walking a tightrope, trying to live by her mother’s standards, trying to appease Zach. He was the one who was angry? She was the one who’d gotten totally lost in the meantime.

So who let that happen, Bett? nagged a most unwelcome voice inside of her. Zach? Your mother? Or you?

The night was frigidly cold. She could not remember ever feeling a wind quite like this one, so unforgiving, so fierce and icy and eerily silent.

Chapter 13

Thanksgiving dawned with four inches of crystal-white snow on the ground. At six in the morning, dressed in a long flannel robe, Bett awkwardly pulled the twenty-pound turkey from the refrigerator. The unwieldy bird was