Treasured

“Not much.”

“Environmental issues?”

“I think global warming is a real risk,” she said at once.

“Good for you. Anything else?”

She held up a forkful of turkey. “The food’s delicious.”

“I was thinking more in terms of another environmental issue,” he teased.

“Sorry. You’re fresh out of luck. I could argue the merits of free-range turkey over the frozen kind,” she suggested cheerfully. “Everyone says free-range is healthier, but they’re just as dead, so how healthy is that?”

Ben chuckled. “Now there’s a hot-button topic, if ever I heard one.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic,” she said. “I told you I have a one-track mind.”

“And it’s totally focused on art,” Ben said. “I think I get that.” He studied her thoughtfully. “This man you were married to, was he an artist?”

She stiffened visibly. “As a matter of fact, he was.”

Ben should have taken comfort in that. If an artist had hurt Kathleen so badly that she wasn’t the least bit interested in marriage, then he should be safe enough from all of Destiny’s clever machinations. She’d miscalculated this time. Oddly, though, he didn’t feel nearly as relieved as he should. In fact, he felt a powerful urge to go find this man who’d hurt Kathleen and wring his neck.

“People get over bad marriages and move on,” he told her quietly.

“Have you gotten over losing the woman you loved?”

“No, but it’s different.”

“Different how?”

Ben hesitated. They were about to enter into an area he never discussed, not with anyone. Somehow, though, he felt compelled to tell Kathleen the truth. “I blame myself for her death,” he said.

Kathleen looked momentarily startled by the admission. “Did you cause her death?”

He smiled sadly at the sudden hint of caution in her voice. “Not the way you mean, no, but I was responsible just the same.”

“How?”

“We argued. She was drunk and I let her leave. She ran her car into a tree and died.” He recited the bare facts without emotion, watching Kathleen’s face. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t look shocked or horrified. Rather she looked indignant.

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” she said fiercely. “She was an adult. She should have known better than to get behind the wheel when she was upset and drunk.”

“People who are drunk are not known for their logic. I could have stopped her. I should have,” Ben countered as he had to every other person who’d tried to let him off the hook.

“Really? How? By taking away the car keys?”

“That would have done it,” he said bleakly, thinking how simple it would have been to prevent the tragedy that had shaped the last three years of his adult life.

“Or she would have waited a bit, then found your keys and taken your car,” Kathleen countered.

“It might have slowed her down, though, given her time to think.”

“As you said yourself, it doesn’t sound to me as if she was thinking all that rationally.”

Ben sighed. No, Graciela hadn’t been thinking rationally, but neither had he. He’d known her state of mind was irrational that night, that she was feeling defensive and cornered at having been caught with her lover. He’d told her to get out anyway. Not only hadn’t he taken those car keys from her, he’d all but tossed her out the door and put her behind the wheel.

“It hardly matters now,” he said at last. “I can’t change that night.”

Kathleen looked directly into his eyes. “No,” she said softly. “You can’t. The only thing you can do—the thing you must do—is put it behind you.”

Ben wanted desperately to accept that, to let go of the past as his entire family had urged him to do, but blaming himself was too ingrained. Absolution from a woman he’d known a few hours counted for nothing.

He forced his gaze away from Kathleen and saw Destiny and his brothers watching him intently, as if they’d sensed or even heard what Ben and Kathleen had been discussing and were awaiting either an explosion or a sudden epiphany. He gave them neither.

Instead, he lifted his glass of water. “To good company and wonderful food. Thanks, Destiny.”

“To Destiny,” the others echoed.

Destiny beamed at him, evidently satisfied that things were working out exactly as she’d intended. “Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.”

Ben drank to her toast, but even as he wished everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving, he couldn’t help wondering when this dark, empty hole inside him would go away and he’d truly be able to count his blessings again. He gazed at Kathleen and thought he saw shadows in her eyes, as well, and guessed she was feeling much the same way.

He knew Destiny wanted something to come from this meeting today, but it wasn’t in the cards. Whatever the whole story, Kathleen Dugan’s soul was as shattered as his own.

3 (#ulink_65934339-f29b-5329-9567-4e1bbeffd033)

Kathleen waited impatiently through several courses of excellent food. She nibbled on pecan pie, then lingered over two cups of rich, dark coffee, hoping for an invitation to Ben’s studio to go through the works that were stashed there. She desperately wanted to see for herself if the painting in the dining room was the exception or the rule.

Then again, it might be sheer torment, especially if each and every painting was extraordinary and Ben still flatly refused to allow her to show them.

When the meal finally ended and people started making their excuses and leaving, she lingered at the table with the family. She debated simply asking for a tour of the studio, but Ben’s forbidding expression stopped her. Not even Destiny seemed inclined to broach the very subject that she claimed had been her reason for asking Kathleen to dinner. It was as if she, too, had read her nephew’s mood and determined that he wouldn’t be receptive.

Kathleen was about to accept a momentary defeat and leave, when Melanie stepped in.

“Kathleen, surely you’re not going without looking at Ben’s paintings,” Melanie said, merriment sparkling in her eyes. “Isn’t that why you came tonight?”

Ben looked as if he’d like to strangle his sister-in-law. Kathleen took her cue from that.

“Perhaps another time,” she said before Ben could utter a word. She smiled at him. “I would love to come back sometime to see your studio, if you’ll let me.”

He regarded her with a faint frown. “Sure,” he said, too polite to refuse outright.

“I’ll call to set it up,” Kathleen promised. She had no intention of doing that. She had a hunch she needed the element of surprise on her side. Meantime, though, let him get complacent, thinking that he’d have fair warning.

“There’s no phone in the studio,” Melanie chimed in.

“And Ben never checks his messages,” Beth added.