Emily McKay – Baby for the Tycoon: The Tycoon's Temporary Baby / The Texas Billionaire's Baby / Navy Officer to Family Man (страница 16)

Her mother’s hand stilled and she looked up. “Is that what you think?”

Wendy continued slicing the carrots for a few minutes in silence, enjoying the way the knife slid through the fibrous vegetable. As she chopped, she felt some of her anger dissipating. Maybe there was something to this cooking-when-you’re-upset thing.

“Momma, nothing I’ve ever done has been good enough for this family.” She gave a satisfying slice to a carrot. “Not my lack of interest in social climbing. Not my unfocused college education.” She chopped another carrot to bits. “And certainly not my job at FMJ.”

“Well,” her mother said, wiping her hands on the towel. “Now that you’ve landed Jonathon—”

“No, Momma.” Wendy slammed the knife down. “My job at FMJ had nothing to do with landing a husband. If all I wanted was a rich husband, you could have arranged that for me as soon as I was of age.” Picking the knife back up, she sliced through a carrot with a smooth, even motion. Keep it smooth. Keep it calm. “I work at FMJ because it’s a company I believe in. And because I enjoy my work. That’s enough for me. And for once in my life, I’d like for it to be enough for you and Daddy.”

“Honey, if it seems like I’ve been trying to fix you your entire life, it’s because I know how hard it is to not quite fit in with this family. I know how hard this world of wealth and privilege can be to people who are different. I didn’t want that for you.”

“Momma, I’m never going to fit into this world. I’m just not. Your constant browbeating has never done anything except make me feel worse about it.”

Her mother blanched and turned away to dab delicately at her eyes, all the while making unmistakable sniffling noises. “I had no idea.”

Wendy had seen her mother bury emotions often enough to recognize this for the show it so obviously was.

“Oh, Momma.” Wendy rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. You just figured you were stronger than I was and that eventually you’d win. You never counted on me being just as strong willed as you are.”

After a few minutes of silence, she said softly, “I’m sorry,

Mom.”

Her mother didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Apology accepted.”

“I really do wish you’d been here for the wedding. I guess I should have made sure you knew that.”

Her mom slapped the knife down onto the counter. “You guess?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, putting a little more force into the chopping. “I guess I should have.”

“I am your mother. Is it so wrong for me to wish you’d wanted me here enough to—”

“Oh, this is so typical,” she said. “Why should I have to beg you to come to my wedding? I’ve lived in California for over five years. When I first moved here, I invited y’all out to visit all the time. You never came. No one in the family has shown any interest in my life or my work until now. But now that baby Peyton is here, you’ve descended like a plague of locusts and—”

“My land,” her mother said, cutting her off, her hands going to her hips. “And you wonder why we didn’t want to come before now, when you talk about us like that.”

Wendy just shook her head. Once again, she’d managed to offend and horrify her mother. Somehow, her mother always ended up as the bridge between Wendy and the rest of the Morgans. The mediator pulled in both directions, satisfying no one.

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that. Obviously I don’t think you’re a locust. Or a plague.”

“Well, then, how did you mean it?”

“It’s just—” Bracing her hands on either side of the cutting board, she let her head drop while she collected her thoughts. She stared at the neat little carrot circles. They were nearly all uniform. Only a few slices stood out. The bits too bumpy or misshapen. The pieces that didn’t fit.

All her life, she’d felt like that. The imperfect bit that no one wanted and no one knew what to do with. Until she’d gone to work for FMJ. And there, finally, she’d fit in.

Her mother just shook her head, sweeping up the pile of diced celery and dumping it in the pot. “You’re always so eager to believe the worst of us.”

“That’s not true.”

“It most certainly is. All your life, you’ve been rebellious just for the sake of rebellion. Every choice you’ve made since the day you turned fifteen has been designed to irritate your father and grandmother. And now this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Remember when you were fifteen and you and Bitsy bought those home-perm kits and gave yourselves home perms four days before picture day at the school?”

She did remember. Of course she did. Bitsy had ended up with nice, bouncy curls. But she’d been bald for months while her hair grew back out. Her father had been so mad his face had turned beet-red and her mother had run off to the bathroom for a dose of his blood-pressure medicine.

That had not been her finest moment.

“Or the time you wanted to go to Mexico with that boyfriend of yours. When we told you no, you went anyway.”

“You didn’t have to have the guy arrested,” she said weakly. She couldn’t muster any real indignation.

“And you should have told him you were only sixteen.”

Also, not her proudest moment.

“And don’t try to say we were being overprotective. No sane parent lets their sixteen-year-old daughter leave the country with a boy they barely know.”

“Look, Mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was such a difficult teenager. I’m sorry I never lived up to your expectations. But that has nothing to do with who I am now.”

“Doesn’t it?” Her mom swept up the carrots Wendy had been chopping and dumped them into the pot, lumpy, misshapen bits and all. She added a drizzle of oil in the pan and cranked up the heat. “You’ve rushed into this marriage with this man we’ve never even met—”

There was a note of censure in her voice that Wendy just couldn’t let pass. “This man that I’ve worked with for years. If you’ve never met him, it’s because you never came out to visit.”

Her mother planted both her hands on the counter between them and leaned forward. “Jonathon seems like a very nice man. But if you married him solely to annoy us then—”

“Oh, Marian, don’t be so suspicious.”

Wendy spun around toward the kitchen door to see her father and Jonathon standing just inside. She and her mother had been so intent on their own conversation that neither of them had heard them enter.

The two men had obviously come to an understanding about the argument upstairs. Her father had his arm slung over Jonathon’s shoulders as if they were old buddies. The smile on his face was downright smug.

Jonathon looked less comfortable. In fact, he rather looked like he’d swallowed something nasty. Slowly his gaze shifted from her mother to her. Obviously, he heard everything her mother said to her. And he didn’t like it.

Nine

“I’m sure,” Wendy’s father was saying, “that our little Gwen here has grown out of her rebellions.”

Jonathon swallowed the tight knot of dread in his throat. “Mrs. Morgan, I assure you—”

But Wendy’s mother sent both of them withering glares and he was smart enough to shut up when a woman wielding a butcher knife sent him a look like that.

Wendy pointed the tip of her own knife in her father’s direction. “You stay out of this.” For the first time in years she felt as though she and her mother were actually talking. She wasn’t about to let her father muck it up.

Turning her gaze back to her mother, she continued as if the men hadn’t entered at all. “I’m not a rebellious teenager anymore. I’m a grown woman. With a job I love. I may not have married the next political golden boy and I may not be VP of Twiddling My Thumbs at Morgan Oil, but I’m successful in my own right. And a lot of people would be proud to have me as their daughter.”

“It’s not that we’re not proud,” her mother began. “But—” “Of course there’s a but. There’s always a but.” Her mother ignored her interruption, slicing to the point of the matter as easily as she sliced through the joints in the chicken. “But you’ve always delighted in rebelling against your father at every turn. If I thought for a minute that marrying Jonathon and raising Peyton was truly what you wanted—”

“It is.”

“—and not just another one of your rebellions then I would support you wholeheartedly.”

Wendy threw up her hands. “Then support me!”

“But I know how you are. If Mema or Big Hank, let alone your daddy, announced that the sky is blue, the very next morning you’d run out and join a research committee to scientifically prove that it’s not.”

“You make me sound completely illogical.” Wendy shook her head as if she didn’t even know how to defend herself against her mother’s accusations. “It’s like you haven’t heard anything I just said.”

“Well, you tell me whether or not this is just rebellion.” Her mom propped her fists on her hips. “Everyone in this family thinks Hank Jr. and Helen should raise Peyton, except you. Do you have any logical reason why you’re so darned determined to raise this baby?”

Jonathon had had enough. He stepped away from her father. Pulling Wendy back against his chest, he said calmly, “I believe that’s the point, isn’t it? Everyone in the family except for Wendy. And Bitsy. Since Bitsy didn’t want her brother raising her daughter, shouldn’t that be enough for everyone?”