Линда Ховард – Sarah's Child (страница 2)

Rome paused before the doorway to the bedroom he’d shared with Diane, and his dark eyes were shadowed, his mouth grim, as he looked at the closed door. “It’s in there,” he said briefly. “In the closet. I’ll be in the boys’ bedroom packing their things. Take your time looking through the stuff.”

Sarah waited until he’d gone into the other bedroom before she slowly opened the door and entered Diane’s bedroom, turning on the light and standing for a moment looking around. Everything had been left as it had been the day of the accident. The book she’d been reading was still lying on the bedside table. Her nightgown was tossed across the foot of the bed. Rome hadn’t spent a night here since Diane had died.

Sarah pulled the box out of the closet and sat down on the floor to go through the contents, tears blurring her vision as she picked up the first photograph of her and Diane together. God, if it hurt her this much to lose a friend, how did Rome feel? He’d lost his wife and two sons.

She and Diane had always been best friends, all the way through school. Diane had been a human dynamo, laughing and chattering, propelling the quieter Sarah along the way. Her blue eyes had sparkled, her honey-brown curls had bounced, and she’d infected everyone who came into contact with her with the enthusiasm for life that brightened every day for her. Oh, the plans she’d made! She was never going to marry. She was going to be a famous fashion designer and travel all over the world. Sarah’s dreams had been only of a real family, one with love in it. Somewhere along the way their plans had been switched. Diane had fallen in love with a tall dark-eyed young rising executive who worked for the same company where Sarah had gotten a job, and from that moment on Sarah had known that her dream would never come true. Diane considered a glamorous career as a fashion designer well lost when she could have Rome Matthews, when she could give birth to his two adoring and adorable sons and bask in his love. Sarah quietly devoted herself to the job that was her only solace.

She’d tried not to love Rome, but she’d discovered that emotions weren’t easily controlled. If she hadn’t loved him before he met Diane, she might have kept her feelings from growing into anything serious, but she’d been his from the first. From the moment she’d met him, she’d known, deep inside that he would be more to her than just a colleague. It was his eyes, she thought; they were so deep and dark, eyes with a burning inner intensity. Roman Caldwell Matthews was no lightweight. He had drive and ambition, coupled with a lightning intelligence that had carried him through the ranks of middle management like a meteor. Oh, he wasn’t handsome: his face had a rough-hewn, slightly battered look to it; his cheekbones were too high and sharp; his blade of a nose had been broken once; and his jaw was as solid as a piece of granite. He was a man who would reach out and grasp life, and shape it the way he wanted. He’d been friendly enough to her, but Sarah knew she was too pale and quiet to interest a man with his forceful personality.

Still, the summer when she’d invited Diane to the company picnic she hadn’t expected him to take one look at Diane’s vibrant beauty and claim her for his own. But it had happened, and Diane and Rome had married five months later. Three months after their first anniversary Justin had been born, and two years later Shane. Two beautiful little boys, with their mother’s looks and their father’s determination, and Sarah had loved them because they were Rome’s children.

She’d remained as close to Diane as before, but she’d always been careful not to infringe on the time Rome spent with his family. He traveled a great deal, and Sarah limited her visits to the days he was out of town. She couldn’t say just why, but she sensed that Rome disapproved of her close friendship with Diane, though to her knowledge he’d never said anything. Perhaps it was that he simply didn’t like her, though she’d never done anything to earn it. She’d tried to stay out of his way, and she’d never, never told Diane anything about how she felt. There was no point in it; it would only have distressed Diane, and hurt their friendship.

Sarah had dated, and still did, but only casually. It wouldn’t have been fair to some other man to encourage a closer relationship when there was no way she’d be able to return any love offered to her. Everyone who asked, teasingly, when she was going to marry, had received the same reply: She loved her work too much to wash dirty socks for some man. It had been a lighthearted, stock answer, and it had served the purpose of protecting her vulnerable heart, but it had been a lie. She’d never wanted a career, but it was all she had left, so she’d given it her best. The charade had fooled everyone but herself.

Rome had been devoted to Diane and the boys. The freeway accident, almost two years before, had almost destroyed him. It had destroyed the laughter in him, the fierce-burning fire in his eyes. Diane had been driving the boys to school, and a drunk weaving his way home in the early-morning traffic had crossed out of his lane and hit them head-on. If he hadn’t been killed immediately, Sarah felt that Rome would have choked the man with his bare hands, he’d been so insane with grief when he’d been told. Justin had been killed on impact; Shane had died two days later. Two weeks after the accident Diane had died without ever regaining consciousness or knowing that her sons were gone. During those two weeks, Sarah had spent as much time as she could at her friend’s bedside, holding the limp hand and trying to will her to live, but fearing that Diane wouldn’t want to wake up from her death sleep. Rome had been a permanent fixture on the other side of the bed, holding the hand that bore his ring, his face gray and drawn, locked inside himself. Diane had been his only hope, his only remaining bit of sunshine, and her frail light had flickered and gone out, leaving him in darkness.

Gently Sarah went through all of the snapshots, seeing herself and Diane in various stages of their childhood and adolescence, mixed in with photographs of the boys as babies, toddlers, and rowdy little boys. Rome was in some of those pictures, romping with the boys, washing the car, mowing the grass, doing all of the normal things that fathers and husbands do. Sarah lingered over a picture of him lying on his back in the grass, wearing only a brief pair of denim shorts, holding Justin dangling over his head. His strong brown arms were steady as he held the toddler up, and it was evident that the child felt secure in his father’s hands. Justin had been shrieking with laughter. On the grass beside them, Shane had been trying to climb to his baby feet, and one tiny plump hand had clutched the hair on Rome’s chest in an effort to pull himself up.

“See anything you want?”

The question startled her, and she jumped, dropping the picture back into the box. She realized that he was asking in general and hadn’t noticed her staring at his picture with sick longing, but her shadowy green eyes were wide and wary as she scrambled to her feet, smoothing her skirt.

“Yes. I’ll take the box. There are a lot of pictures in here of Diane and the boys…if you don’t—”

“Take them,” he said curtly, walking into the room. He stopped in the middle of the floor and stood looking around, as if he’d never been there before, but his eyes were bleak, and his mouth looked as if it would never smile again. He did sometimes smile, Sarah realized, after a fashion, but it was merely a polite movement of his lips rather than an expression of humor. Certainly the smile never reached his eyes and lit the dark fires that had once smoldered there.

He jammed his hands into his pockets, as if he had to do something to keep them from knotting into fists. His shoulders were tense, braced against the impact of memories that this room must bring to him. He’d slept in that bed with Diane, made love to her, wrestled with the boys on early Saturday mornings when they came running in to wake him up. Quickly Sarah leaned down to pick up the box, turning her gaze away from him to keep from witnessing his anguish.

The anguish was as much in her as it was in him. She loved him enough to wish Diane back for him, so he could smile again. He would always be Diane’s anyway, because her death hadn’t stopped his love for her. He was still grieving for her, still hurting from her loss.

“I’m finished in the boys’ room,” he said remotely. “Everything’s packed up. I…I—” Suddenly his voice broke, and Sarah’s heart broke with it. He drew a ragged breath, his chest heaving with the effort it took to control himself.

Suddenly his face twisted with rage, and he whirled to slam his fist against the dresser, rattling the bottles of perfume and cosmetics that still littered the top. “Dammit, it was such a waste!” He cursed violently, then groped for the dresser as his body sagged under the weight of his anger and grief. He’d never known defeat until his family had been taken from him. Death was final, permanent, striking without warning and destroying the life he’d built for himself.