The House That Love Built

by Jean Brashear

  Silence settled around them in the cozy darkness, each of them clasping a little boy’s hand, connected by the past and an uncertain future. Kneeling on opposite sides of the same bed in the same room where another precious child’s loss had ripped them apart.

  An odd sort of peace descended, and Cleo, heart weary from the battleground of longing and guilt and memory, thought she could lay her head down and sleep for a month.

  Benjy’s hand went slack in hers, but still she held on, drifting on the tide of respite until she felt something brush her hair. A beloved voice in her ear, “Hang on, Snow.”

  Strong arms lifted her. Cradled her close.

  Her nostrils inhaled the scent that meant safety and home. Love and hope.

  Then she was settled on soft cushions, her shoes removed. Covered against the chill creeping in where firm flesh had warmed her. “Come to bed, Malcolm,” she murmured as she sank deeper and deeper into dreams. “I can’t sleep without you.”

  A kiss pressed to her brow. A pause.

  Lips she’d loved for a lifetime touching her own so gently, lingering, lingering…

  Then gone.

  She stirred. Protested. Tried to wake.

  “Sh-h…easy. Sleep now, sweetheart.”

  Stroking again, soft brushes against her hair.

  Lost in the pleasure, Cleo let dreams take her.

  Malcolm stood over Cleo’s bed and fought himself.

  How easy it would be to yield. To lie down beside her, take her in his arms. He wouldn’t even consider how badly he wanted to make love to her.

  But it would almost be enough simply to hold her, to find his way back home.

  Lose himself in her embrace.

  Cleo stirred. I can’t sleep without you. So fragile she appeared, his Snow White, pale skin and black hair, emerald-green eyes.

  Once she had loved him with every breath. He had loved her the same.

  Even now, the need for her was enough to bring him to his knees.

  But she was as much Scarlett O’Hara, tough and principled, sturdier than she appeared. She very well might welcome him in her bed—tonight. When tomorrow dawned, however incredible the hours between—and they would be, he damn well knew that—she would be ashamed of them both for yielding.

  So for the sake of a heart he treasured more than his own, Malcolm made his way out into the night alone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Malcolm drove toward the condo blindly, making call after call about Ria over his cell phone headset to keep from whipping the car around and going back. If he’d ever done anything harder than leaving Cleo the first time, it was walking away now.

  How many times had he lifted that delicate body and carried her off to the bed that had been their haven?

  Even seeing that she’d rid herself of the bed he’d built for her with such love had done little to quell his yearning to return to the private world they’d so carelessly inhabited, never dreaming how easily it all could be lost.

  He’d felt so complete there with them, once more at one with Cleo and a beloved child. If only—

  He smacked the heel of his hand against the steering wheel.

  Another child, not yet met but no less deserving of care, had to be considered.

  And Malcolm the deal maker couldn’t find a way to have them all.

  Tired to the bone, he entered his garage, not surprised to see Joanna’s parking space still empty. Earlier in this day that seemed aeons long, before he’d raced off when Ria had gone missing, they’d compared schedules, and she’d said she’d be meeting with a group of colleagues for dinner, which would run late.

  Even if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with Ria’s disappearance, he wouldn’t have been concerned about what time Joanna got home. She’d made it clear from the beginning that she was her own woman. It was part of what he’d liked about her, but now he saw it for what it was: he just didn’t care. She’d never evoked the fierce, possessive feelings that Cleo called forth from him.

  So how did he change that, now when his belly was leaden with the knowledge that for five long years, he’d harbored a seed of hope that the parting with Cleo was only temporary. That someday, somehow, they’d be back where they belonged: together. And the fact that they wouldn’t, well, he had only himself to blame.

  He stared out his windshield at nothing. After the roller coaster of fear and hope, yearning and despair, he was tapped out.

  Better to feel nothing, if he could manage it. If he let in the grief he knew was lurking, ready to strike, he’d howl at the moon and tear at his clothes.

  So Malcolm released a long sigh and climbed from his car. He had to find some means to clear Cleo out of his heart to make room for a woman who couldn’t hold a candle to her.

  With dragging steps, he entered the dark condo. He flipped on the light and went to the entry table, scanned his mail, then dropped it all without opening anything.

  A shower. That would relax some tense muscles and revive him before Joanna arrived.

  Not until he got to the bathroom did he notice what he should have seen before. The bathroom counter was neat and tidy. Almost empty. None of Joanna’s bottles and jars in sight.

  He strode to her closet and jerked it open.

  Empty, too.

  Malcolm surveyed the bedroom, noting the signs he’d missed. It was as if she’d vanished.

  Which, of course, she had. He raced to the kitchen, stomach clenched, heart in his throat.

  And there he saw the folded sheet of her expensive cream vellum propped up against the phone, his name on the outside in her bold hand. Malcolm stood so still that he could hear his own pulse, feel the rush of blood in his veins.

  Finally, with a hand that wasn’t quite steady, he reached for the note.

  Malcolm—

  I’m sorry. You will hate me for this, but I can’t figure out any other way. I know it will hurt you, but I just can’t do what you want. I wish I could find an answer you could accept, but I’m a realist. I only wish you were. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t listen.

  You won’t want to see me again, so I’ll spare you the scene. By the time you read this, it will be over.

  You’re a good man, Malcolm. Don’t blame yourself.

  Joanna

  The fist that clenched his heart loosened just enough to release the anguish he’d thought only losing Cleo could rip from his chest.

  He crumpled the sheet and fired it at the window. It flew like a rocket, thunked against the glass, then fell to the floor with barely a sound.

  It made no dent…just as his child’s loss would never be felt by anyone else. Maybe Joanna would regret it, but she would seek refuge in her ambition and go on.

  But Malcolm would never forget. One more day, Joanna. I had one more day. You promised.

  And he did blame himself. He hadn’t had the words to make the world right. Just as with Ria. With David. A man should be able to do that for his family.

  A man should protect the ones he loved, shield them from harm. The sense of failure sank in his gut like a stone.

  And the only person who would understand was the woman he’d just left.

  Cleo.

  In that instant, it hit him that what had kept them apart tonight was gone. A tiny seed of hope stirred from barren soil; with shame, Malcolm quickly crushed it. Maybe there would be time to think about second chances, but tonight, he had a child to mourn. One he’d never even see. Never hold.

  He was angry, so damn angry. Rage tore through him with the speed of a brushfire. He overturned a kitchen chair. Heaved the table on its side, searched for something else.

  Then fury vanished; in its wake, his knees went rubbery. He gripped the counter and stared at the phone as a starving man eyes a crust of bread.

  He could call Cleo. She would tell him she was sorry. She might even cry for his dead child.

  Grief bent him double.

  He sagged against the wall and slid to the floor, staring out into the darkn
ess. All he could see was a grave that would never be, a child he could not bury beside its brother.

  He groped for the phone on the floor and punched in some numbers.

  Her voice was muzzy with sleep when she answered.

  “Snow.” And then he couldn’t find the words. At last, he managed to say, “Please, Snow. I need you.”

  “Malcolm?” Cleo sat up in her bed. “What’s wrong?”

  Only silence greeted her, but it was thick and pulsing with her fear. “Malcolm, are you all right?”

  Finally, she heard him draw breath. “It’s Joanna. She…the baby—” He choked out the words. “The baby’s gone, Snow. She didn’t wait.”

  She closed her eyes. As much as she had ached over the thought of Malcolm having a child that wasn’t hers, never in a million years would she have wished this on him.

  “Tell me your address.” She grabbed for a pencil and paper, then scribbled it down. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  She dressed quickly, dizzy from the whiplash of emotions. Last night, giving him up, her eyes too dry to cry, her heart filled with sawdust.

  Then today. Ria. Benjy. Malcolm putting her to bed. Kissing her goodbye.

  Knowing he was forever beyond her reach. Sleeping to evade the grief waiting to paint every hollow in her with dark despair.

  For one instant the thought glimmered that they might have their second chance after all. Ruthlessly, she quashed it. There was something obscene about letting that thought into her mind right now.

  But as she made ready, it lingered.

  She crept down the stairs after slipping a note under Cammie’s door, telling her where she’d be. As she drove toward Malcolm’s condo, Cleo gripped the steering wheel. Malcolm needed her. It was all she had to hear.

  God. Was she really ready to open herself up to love again? With this man she’d hurt so badly, who’d devastated her so much that she’d locked up her heart for five years?

  But Sandor had been right. Malcolm was the only man she’d ever loved, and her best friend. She wouldn’t think about love tonight, though. Her friend was in pain, and she would be there for him. Such was her resolve when she locked her car, headed up the steps, rapped on the door.

  No answer. Cleo knocked harder.

  Still nothing. An instant of terror. But no, Malcolm would never—

  He was the strongest man she’d ever known, but how much more could he be expected to take?

  “Malcolm?” Flat palms against the door, then clutching the knob—

  It turned. Cleo rushed inside. Glanced around.

  Spotted him in the darkened living room, crouched in a chair, head in his hands. Shoulders bowed.

  She crossed to him. Knelt. “Malcolm, I’m here.” She tendered one stroke to that thick, dark hair. “I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

  “I keep—” He cleared his throat. “I keep wondering if there’s some set of cosmic scales in force. You can have Cleo or Ria or this baby, but not all of them. Don’t be greedy, Channing.”

  He turned an anguished gaze to her. “Did I cause this to happen, Snow? Because I didn’t want to let you go again?” He stared out the window. “Is that baby’s death on my head, because I got caught up in how it felt to be home again and wished so hard that I could stay?”

  “You take too much on yourself, Malcolm. Joanna’s mind was made up. You never had a chance to change it.”

  “I tried, Snow. I swear I did.”

  Malcolm’s eyes were so open to her that she hurt just looking into them. Agony held this man whom she loved in its tight, cruel fist.

  She didn’t know what to do. Everything in her life had changed so lightning-fast that she struggled to keep up.

  But Malcolm needed her, so she forgot everything else and opened her arms.

  He went into them like a lost sailor who’d finally found shore. Clasped her so tightly she could barely breathe. She buried her face in his shoulder and inhaled the scent of him, one that had wafted her into sleep tonight and thousands more, embedded at the cellular level as the only true fragrance of home.

  A shudder ran through him. “Dear God. What have I done?”

  “Oh, love…” The endearment slipped out, but she wouldn’t call it back, even if she could.

  “I blew it. I didn’t see how desperate she was. I hardly talked to her after—”

  “Malcolm, stop. You can’t fix everything. You always believe that you should, but you’re not God. And people can’t always be mended.” She pressed a kiss just behind his ear. “Even by you.”

  “I don’t expect to.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. You’ve always been successful, achieved every goal you sought. You tried to cure Ria for years. You did your best to heal me when I was lost after David.”

  He jerked from her grasp. “This isn’t about goals.” He stalked to the window. Slammed a hand against the frame. The glass rattled. “Damn it, that baby deserved a chance to live, to be loved. I failed it, just as I did David and Ria.”

  He caught her eyes in the reflection. “And you, Snow,” he said softly. “Most of all, you.”

  “You only left because I begged. The destruction of our marriage goes both ways, Malcolm. You would never have given up on us.”

  For a long time, he stared into the darkness. Finally, he revolved. Met her gaze head-on. “So what now, Snow?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no baby to stand between us. No Joanna. What about the young pup?”

  “Who?”

  “Whatever the hell his name is. Dr. Java.”

  “Oh. Colin.” She almost smiled at that. “No, he and I aren’t—”

  “Good.”

  “But—” On the brink of that second chance she thought she’d longed for, fear grabbed her by the throat.

  “But what?” Drowning dark eyes waited patiently.

  She twisted her fingers. Tried to breathe.

  Malcolm, this was Malcolm. At least be honest, Cleo. She summoned her courage. “It would destroy me to let you into my heart again and lose you.”

  She’d rebuilt her life, piece by piece, after he’d left, but it had been more agony than she could survive a second time. Saying no would be much safer. Her house, her life, were already crowded with too many people’s demands.

  But he was the loom upon which so much of the fabric that was Cleo Channing had been woven.

  “What are you saying?” His eyes widened. “Wait. You’re afraid of me?” He closed the gap between them, disbelief and hurt giving way to temper. “You think I’m not scared? It damn near killed me when you sent me away.” He seized her shoulders. “Goddamn you, Cleo. You had no right to hide from me. Me. Twenty-eight years of giving you every last corner of my soul, and you tossed it all like so much trash. How could you?” He shook her once—Malcolm, who’d never lifted even a finger to her in anger.

  He dropped his hands as though he’d touched hot coals. “My God.” As fast as possible, he put distance between them.

  In that instant, Cleo’s inner vision cleared like mist before sun, and what she learned about herself staggered her.

  He was right. He’d opened himself freely to her and to their children from day one, while she’d always kept a part of herself in reserve. A small but essential fragment remained inviolate so that she would be able to rebuild when, as she’d always expected, she was alone again. The child who’d been the adult in the relationship with her mother, the girl who’d had no father to lean on, no other family of any kind, had absorbed as her earliest lesson that she was essentially on her own.

  And in protecting herself from the inevitable future, she’d made it happen. Ria’s rebellion…David’s death…both had served, in her mind, as signposts of the coming end.

  Her sensitive, intuitive elder daughter had perceived that Cleo had more to give and refused to do so. What more painful lesson could a child learn? She’d said over and over in hundreds of ways: I need more.

  And who understoo
d better than Cleo what it was to crave that most primal blessing, a mother’s unconditional love, and be denied it?

  Cleo sank heavily to the sofa. She had set out to be her mother’s opposite, but in withholding her deepest self, she’d created exactly the reality she’d feared.

  And nothing would ever change until she did.

  “Snow, talk to me. You’re as pale as milk. What’s the matter?” Malcolm crouched beside her and gently took her hands.

  Memories whirled around her until she was dizzy. A cold San Francisco afternoon, and a drawling stranger with a crooked grin calling her miss, while inside, she was shivering, knowing somehow that everything was about to change.

  The man that stranger had become grazed the corner of her mouth with only one finger. Every neuron of her recognized his touch.

  “I’m frightened, Malcolm,” she whispered.

  “Me, too.” He drew her to her feet and clasped one of her hands against his chest, over his heart. The beat was racing, just as hers was. “But you’re not alone now. Talk to me, Snow.”

  She tried to explain what she’d only now understood. “It hurt so much when you left. But I was…relieved. I could protect myself against everyone but you. You kept pushing me to leave the only place I’d found to hide.”

  Tenderly he cupped her cheek, his clasp still tight on the hand over his heart. “We wounded each other until I feared we’d bleed to death. It was like crawling through the Sahara without water to walk away from you, but I couldn’t figure out what else to do. You didn’t want me near. You wouldn’t let me help. There was nothing left of what we’d had, as though we’d buried our whole life together with David. All the good things, all those years…”

  “I couldn’t deal with your pain and my own, too. I felt yours too much. And I knew—” she swallowed hard. “—you blamed me. For not loving her enough.”

  Malcolm’s gaze widened. “No. I said that, but I was wrong. I could never figure out how to make her okay, to heal whatever was tearing her apart and causing her to act as she did. I searched for a way to put things right again, but that couldn’t happen because David was dead. And you’d gone into a place I couldn’t follow. I needed you, Snow, but you didn’t want me anymore. I loved you so much, and I couldn’t reach you. I harmed you every day, just by being present.” His voice was barely audible. “I once promised you I’d never let you down, that night in the park when we first made love.” His eyes were the saddest thing she’d ever seen. “But I did.”