This Time for Keeps, page 10
It was the most honest conversation they’d had in more than two years. Maybe ever.
“Do you really want me to answer that?” he asked, and his words were quiet. Hoarse. With them, his body tensed.
Her eyes darkened. Her mouth parted, just as it had earlier, when he’d reached for her. When time had fallen away and want had poured in, when need had taken over and their mouths had come together.
She lifted her arms and for a moment he tensed, shocked that she was going to touch him again. But she didn’t. She hugged her arms around herself, rocked back.
“I better check on Charlotte,” she said, and before he could so much as blink she was slipping past him, just as she always did, sweeping the moment of naked honesty under the rug. Erasing it. Just as she’d erased so much else…anything and everything that made her uncomfortable.
With the rain splattering against the old roof, something dark and punishing pounded through him. He picked up one of the tubs of his old clothes, yanked the cord to the lantern and headed downstairs.
“CALL ME BACK IF HER FEVER gets over 101.”
“Okay, but—”
“Meg.” Dr. Darla Graham’s voice was warm but firm. “I know you’re worried, but trust me, babies get fevers. I know it’s scary for you, but give her a few hours. If she’s not better in the morning, call me back.”
Meg kneeled by the sofa, having come down from the attic to find the baby’s forehead warmer than usual, but not burning up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, acutely aware of how neurotic she was being, but grateful for the pediatrician’s patience. They’d crossed paths once before Charlotte had come along, at one of her cousin Faith’s infamous backyard bashes, but for the most part, it was a whole new world of doctors and playdates, nannies and baby stores and toys. Lots and lots of toys. “I’m just new at this.”
“Of course you are,” Darla said. “It comes with the territory.”
Meg soothed a damp strawberry curl back from Charlotte’s face as a streak of lightning brightened the room. “Then when will I relax?”
Darla laughed. “Oh, maybe about the time she hits thirty.”
With the rumble of thunder, Meg smiled, marveling that anyone could sleep through the spring storm. “Okay—101 or higher, call you. Otherwise…chill out.”
“You can call me anyway,” Darla said. “Just try to relax.”
“Got it.” They said their goodbyes and Meg put down the phone, watching the baby sleep. She looked peaceful, curled on her side with her hands tucked up under her chin. That had to be a good sign, that she wasn’t thrashing the way she had the last time she had a fever. That night, Meg had gone dusk to dawn without sleep.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement from the kitchen and looked up to find Russell with a wineglass in each hand.
“Here,” he said, offering one to her.
The stab was as sharp as it was unexpected. She pushed to her feet and crossed to him, met him before he could reach the edge of the old braided rug. “I thought you were leaving.”
“Wanted to see what the doctor said first.”
Meg eyed the glass in his hands. “She said not to worry.”
“And did you tell her that wasn’t possible?”
“Something like that.” She wasn’t sure she’d relaxed for more than a minute or two since Charlotte had come to live with her. “I thought I knew, you know? I thought I knew what love was.”
She regretted her choice of words the second they left her mouth.
“I mean…I used to worry about you—a car accident, some sudden illness, a dangerous assignment—but it was always fleeting, one of those nasty thoughts you can push aside. But Charlotte…”
“Meggie. You’re doing great.”
“Maybe it’s because of Hope,” she said, glancing from Russell to the sofa, where Charlotte still slept, her bright red hair damp against her flushed face. “Because of the way we lost her. Before then, things just worked out, even with my mother. Not everyone survives breast cancer. But she did. And then there was the infertility, but we overcame that, too. We even got through the first trimester! But then she just…died. She was just gone, Russell, and I couldn’t fix that.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that! But then you were gone and Ainsley was dead, and suddenly Charlotte was here, and all I could think was, ‘Oh, my God, what if something happens to her?’”
“Nothing is going to happen to Charlotte.”
“But babies die, Russell. It happens. Julia had a younger sister…did you know that? She died of SIDS when she was seven months old. My aunt was pregnant with Faith at the time—that’s how she got her name.”
“Meg—”
“And I just…sometimes it overwhelms me. I’ve got this precious little life in my hands, and if anything ever happened to her… Sometimes when she sleeps I just stand there and watch her, hang on every breath….”
“How could you not?” he said with a tenderness she hadn’t heard from him in a very long time. “Come on,” he said, offering her the goblet again. “Why don’t you sit and rest for a while—you’re exhausted.”
She looked at the glass in his hand—a hand where a wedding ring had once resided. Against the handblown crystal, the dark burgundy sloshed—the same dark burgundy she’d put back on the shelf the night before—and everything inside her tensed. Her mouth went dry…then started to water. The glass was so close. All she had to do was take it, draw it to her lips. One sip. That was all.
One sip wouldn’t hurt anything.
“Meg?” he asked, and through the fog she heard the confusion in his voice. “You weren’t saving that bottle for something special, were you?”
She forced her eyes to his and felt the odd rush clear down to her toes, just like in the attic, when he’d asked if she wanted to know what he saw in his dreams.
The thought had swirled through her, as warm and seductive as the first sip of wine. Russell in bed…naked.
He always slept naked.
She jerked herself back, just as she’d done in the attic. They’d been speaking of Hope, their child. Instead, Meg had seen Russell sprawled on a big bed, wrapped in a crisp cotton sheet.
The realization still disturbed her.
“I need to stay alert,” she said, stepping back. “I don’t need…” Help. Him. “I just want to get to bed.” She verbally detoured, but when the green of his eyes went dark, she realized her mistake.
This had been their house. They’d lived here, loved here. It was only natural that seeing him here would stir up old feelings—and dreams.
That’s why she’d kissed him. That’s why she’d reached for him, opened to him.
Wanted him.
It had been so long.
“Please,” she said, and even as she formed the word, she had to wonder what she meant. What she wanted.
Why he wouldn’t just leave? The irony was not lost on her. The one time she wanted him gone, he turned into glue.
“You should go.” The festival was only a few days away. She had a ton of work to get done. She so did not have time to play house with the one man who could destroy it all. Again.
Through the recessed lighting, his eyes seemed to glow. “Or maybe I should stay,” he said. “Let you get some rest.”
“Russell—”
“Charlotte has a fever, may not sleep well. Why don’t you just let me stand point so you can crawl into bed and get some real sleep?”
“No.” The word shot out of her. The offer was like vinegar on a healing wound. “We’re fine—I can take care of Charlotte.”
“Of course you can,” he said. “But with the storm—”
“Russell.” Instinct, self-preservation, they both told her to get him out of there before she did something she’d regret. “I’m hardly someone who needs my hand held during a thunderstorm.”
“I know.” His voice was warm, rich like the wine he’d offered her. It seeped through her, coercing her to relax, even as she warned herself not to. “I remember.”
So did she. Closing her eyes, she saw it all, the summer day a lifetime before, when a world-weary Russell Montgomery had walked back into her life after she’d been forced to leave New York. Months had passed since they’d seen each other. She’d been caring for her mother. He’d been off covering another war. There’d been the occasional e-mail, but no phone calls.
Then she’d looked up from her desk at the paper one day, and he’d been there, bigger than life, lounging in the doorway with a backpack slung over his shoulder, watching her. Just watching her. As he always had, with that secret, intimate gleam in his eyes.
And everything inside her had started to melt.
It was all a blur after that. She stood. He moved. They met somewhere in the middle. His arms around her. Hers around him. The feel of him pressed up against her, his mouth slanting against hers. She held on tight, holding him, loving the feel of him, shocked that he’d come for her, never wanting to let go.
Somehow they’d made it back to his room at the Magnolia Manor.
It had been spring then, too. There’d been thunder in the distance when they came together for the first time, making love in broad daylight…in a hotel rumored to be haunted.
There’d been so many other springs since then, so many other storms. So many other afternoons spent making love. In their bed, beneath the fall of the old willow out back by the creek…on the kitchen floor.
Opening her eyes, she found him watching her much as he’d watched her the day he’d come for her, all those months after she’d been forced to leave New York. There was a stillness to him now, an intensity that snaked through her with carnal precision. Both wineglasses were still in his hands, untouched.
Looking at him hurt. Remembering…ached.
Because she didn’t know what else to do, she slipped past him and headed to the front door, let herself onto the slightly chilly, rain-splattered front porch, where at least she could breathe without pulling the scent of him deep, deep within her.
She felt him before she heard the squeak of the screen door.
“We always did better with the storms around us,” she whispered as the damp wind whipped her hair against her face, “than the storms inside.”
He closed the distance between them, moving to stand behind her, his hands clutching the rail on either side of her. All she had to do was close her eyes and lean back….
“Sometimes, luv, you just have to let the clouds clear.”
Luv. God, when was the last time he’d called her that?
Not trusting herself to look back, Meg looked past the truck parked across the street to the house beyond, the glow of lights from every window in the Victorian house.
“Why did you walk away?”
She stilled. Around her the heavily leafed branches of the oaks swayed with the storm, horizontal flashes of lightning illuminating the riot of rain. But she did not let herself move.
She’d never gone anywhere.
“In the attic,” Russell clarified, and his voice was oddly hoarse. “Why did you walk away?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Eleven months before
THE LIGHTS WERE LOW, the music loud. From the jukebox, Faith Hill sang about melting and floating and breathing…and love.
It was the fourth time Meg had selected the same song.
She sat at a back table in the smoky honky-tonk, watching. Numb. Around her the scene was the same as it was the week before: women in tight jeans and tighter shirts, shiny silver-and-turquoise belt buckles, some with hats, most in boots. Perfect hair. Perfect smiles.
Perfect…everything.
The men, in their low-slung jeans and Western shirts and scuffed-up boots, moved among them, offering up drinks and dances and…more.
Alone, Meg glanced at the wineglass on the table in front of her. The paper was in trouble. Advertisers were bailing. Circulation was down. The staff had been cut, and cut, and cut some more. Just that afternoon she’d had to let three more go, including Marlene, who’d been with the Gazette for over fifty years. And with each severance package, with each teary goodbye, something inside Meg screamed a little louder. If she couldn’t get a handle on—
“You’re back.” The drawl was low, husky. Before Meg could so much as blink, the stranger pulled out the chair next to her and slid in close. “I got you another,” he said, easing a fresh glass of wine near her hands. Slowly, his eyes met hers. “Didn’t think a pretty thing like you should drink alone.”
Meg knew she should say something. Feel something. Do something. That’s how the game was played. But inside, the web of numbness spread deeper.
“Name is Cody,” the man said with a slow, intimate smile. His face was tanned, slightly leathery, with a dark shadow at his jaw. His hair was thick, wavy, the kind a woman liked to run her hands through. “Been hoping you would come back.”
She eyed the glass of wine. Just one sip, she thought. Just one more sip…
“You look surprised,” Cody said, and then his hand was on her wrist, softly, gently, fingers stroking flesh, his thumb strumming a faint little circle. “And sad,” he murmured, inching closer. “Far too sad for such a pretty lady.”
The words washed over her. She reached for them, pulled them close. Wanted them.
Wanted them so damn bad.
It had been…she didn’t know. She’d lost track of time. But she knew it had been a long time since she’d felt a man’s touch. When she closed her eyes, Russell’s face was barely more than a shadowy memory, his voice like fading smoke. His touch…
She no longer remembered his touch.
Refusing to linger, she reached for the fresh glass of wine and drew it to her mouth. Sipped slowly. Deeply.
All the while she kept her eyes on Cody’s, on the hunger burning in his.
A hunger she had not seen in a very long time.
A hunger she wanted desperately to feel again.
Present Day
EACH FLASH OF LIGHTNING gave a glimpse into the night, the frenzy of the rain, the way the branches whipped and bushes shook. Water streamed down the driveway and swirled in the street, gathering faster than it could drain away. New foliage lay among the hail-flattened petunias Meg had planted a few weeks before.
Funny. She hadn’t even noticed the hail. In fact, she’d almost forgotten Russell was waiting for an answer to his question.
Why had she walked away from the attic? That was easy.
“I was worried about Charlotte,” she said, trying not to shiver. Only that afternoon the temperature had soared into the low eighties. She was quite sure the storm had dropped the mercury a good twenty degrees since then.
“But that’s not why you walked away, is it?”
A screen surrounded the porch, but the wind blew the rain sideways, sending it like tiny stinging missiles toward the house. Meg braced herself against the onslaught, even as the chill crept deeper.
“This is me you’re talking to, Meg. Me. Your husband. And I know what you’re doing.”
Against the rail, her hands tightened, but she said nothing.
“You had me in there. You really did. Telling me your fears, your dreams, but the second it starts getting real, the second you think you might hear something you don’t want to, you run as fast and far as you can.”
She’d realized her mistake the second she’d asked him about his dreams. She’d just gotten so caught up in the moment and the memories, for a moment there it had just been her and Russell. Once, dreams had not been taboo.
“I walked away,” she said very coolly, very slowly, “because it doesn’t matter.”
“Goddamn it, Meg.” And then his hands were on her body, not gentle like before, but forceful enough to make her turn toward him. “Stop, okay? The games…the pretending…that’s what doesn’t matter now, not anymore. Can’t you be honest with yourself, with me, even now?”
“You want honesty?” she asked, and it all boiled up inside her, the honesty and the heartache, the nights she’d sat up alone, with nothing but a bottle of wine to offer her company. “I’ll give you honesty. I don’t want this, Russell. I don’t want to know what you dream about, I don’t want to stroll down memory lane, and I don’t want you.” There was too much water under the bridge. “I’ve worked hard to move on with my life, to run the paper and take care of Charlotte. Looking back…no good can come from it.”
“What about forward?”
She glanced at his hands, still against her upper arms. “Where is your next assignment? When do you leave?”
The lines of his face tightened.
“That’s forward,” she said. “That’s what tomorrow holds.”
His hands fell away. He stepped back. “I see her.” His voice, flat, empty, slammed into Meg like the challenge it was. “I see our little girl.”
Meg stilled, didn’t want to hear.
But he kept right on going, doing what she’d asked him not to do, as if somehow he magically knew what was best for her.
Just like before.
“Laughing,” he said, and the image immediately formed, the one that had haunted Meg since the moment she’d seen Dr. Brennan’s face cloud over.
“I see you,” he said, his words barely audible over the wind. “What could have been.”
If Hope hadn’t died.
The coldness came faster now, sharper, no longer seeping but slicing with debilitating precision. “Russell, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
It was all she could do not to charge him, to throw her hands against his chest and push him away, make him leave. “Why are you doing this?”
But he was so damn calm. So damn in control. “No, Meg, why are you doing this?”
She wanted to scream. It was impossible to have a conversation with someone who commandeered every question and made it their own. “Doing what?”
“What you always do,” he said in a voice she instantly recognized, the one that was deceptively calm and civilized. The one that always meant the ax was about to fall. “Checking on Charlotte, rearranging the pantry, going to bed without telling me or staying up late to work on some important project so you don’t have to endure me touching you…it’s all the same, Meg. It’s all hiding—pretending, playing by some set of rules you never bothered to tell me about.”
