Fairytale Not Required

by Stephanie Rowe

  “Recipes?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Wait a second. Don’t you have a chef you’re planning to hire?”

  “Nope. I’m the chef.” He moved his box against the wall and leaned back against it. Ah…better.

  “How does that figure?” She studied him with eyes that were clearly trying to ferret out his secrets, and he grinned, realizing he was enjoying her scrutiny, her need for answers about who he was. “You’re planning to open a pizza shop with homemade pies, and yet you can’t reheat one in your own kitchen?”

  “Yeah, well, I lied about not being able to find my stove.” He stretched his legs out, trying to uncramp them after being on his knees all day. “I wanted company. I saw your light on, and I figured I’d use the pizza as an excuse to get you to let me in.”

  “Oh.” A pleased smile flitted at the corners of her mouth, and anticipation rolled through him as he realized she wasn’t as detached from him as she’d tried to act. “You could have just asked.”

  “I did. You didn’t answer the door until I said I had food.” He narrowed his eyes, studying her. “How are you feeling? Have you made a doctor’s appointment yet?”

  Her cheeks immediately turned bright red. “I’m fine. I will handle the medical side of things. You don’t need to concern yourself.”

  “But I do.” He sat up and leaned forward. “Do you have medical insurance, Astrid? Can you afford a doctor?”

  She leapt to her feet and paced restlessly away from him. “Stop it,” she said. “Just because I live here doesn’t mean you can control me.”

  “I’m not trying to control you.” Jason stood up, energy coursing through him at Astrid’s resistance. “But that’s my child you’re carrying, and I want to make sure you both are safe.”

  “We’re fine—”

  He caught her arm, turning her toward him. “Astrid, the fact you lost a baby before might mean that it could happen again. You need to get to a doctor who can run tests to find out whether there is any preventative treatment that you need to have.”

  “Stop it!” She pulled her arm out of his grip, her eyes blazing. “I know that! Don’t you think I know that? It’s my problem. I’ll deal with it.”

  “Shit, Astrid, it’s not your issue alone. I’m in this with you. Together. As a team, not as someone trying to control you.” He saw her composure unraveling and he didn’t know how to help her. “Talk to me, Astrid. What did I do? Why are you freaking out on me?”

  She slipped out the window onto the deck and leaned on the railing, staring out into the night. Jason ground his jaw and followed her, easing out onto the narrow deck behind her. For a long moment, neither of them spoke, and the night was filled with the sounds of nature, sounds that Jason hadn’t heard since he’d left Minnesota for school.

  Astrid wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her arms to her chest as she faced the lake.

  After a moment, Jason set his hands on either side of her hips and leaned forward, trapping her between his body and the railing.

  She stiffened, but she didn’t move away, and Jason became increasingly aware of the intimacy of their position. It was altogether too much like when they’d been on the rock. That moment had led to lovemaking, which meant he should back off now and make sure that didn’t happen.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he leaned forward and rested his chin on her shoulder. “Astrid,” he said quietly. “We’ve got to work through this together. Don’t shut me out. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

  God, it felt amazing the way Jason was holding her. Barely touching her, not trapping her, just feeding her his strength and warmth. Astrid bit her lip, struggling to hold her composure. “I’m scared,” she finally whispered.

  “Me, too, sweetheart,” he said. “Me, too.”

  “You are?” She hadn’t expected that response. Jason was all about strength and power.

  “Yeah.” His hands slipped off the railing. He wrapped his arms around her waist, easing her back against his chest. She knew she should pull away, but she couldn’t make herself do it. It just felt too good to be held. “What are you afraid of?”

  “Everything.”

  “Such as?”

  “God, everything.” She leaned her head back against his shoulder and closed her eyes, focusing on the strength of his body against hers. “I failed last time, Jason. So completely. In every way.”

  Jason rubbed his jaw against her cheek, his whiskers bristling against her skin. “Were you married before? What happened with the baby’s father?”

  Astrid bit her lip. How could she tell him what happened? She looked like such a fool. A pathetic victim. She didn’t want anyone to look at her like that anymore. She wanted to be strong, and to have Jason see her as a woman who could stand on her own. “I’d rather not talk about it.” She tensed, expecting him to push, but he didn’t.

  He was just quiet, and she began to relax.

  “My wife’s name was Kate,” he said, resting his cheek against hers. “She was a dermatologist who specialized in cosmetic treatments. She had pioneered some new treatments that were all the rage in Hollywood, and celebrities were constantly flying out to New York to get treated by her. She was a star, and she loved it.”

  Astrid bit her lip against the wave of inadequacy. Jason’s former wife was a famous and ground-breaking doctor with celebrity clients? As opposed to Astrid, who was a broke, creatively-challenged artist with a stained childhood and tainted family history. The difference was grim and depressing, a bleak stamp of reality on any fantasies about her and Jason.

  Suddenly, Astrid wanted out of his arms, away from the façade that he was concerned about her as a woman. How could he possibly be interested in her romantically, after being married to a woman like that? She was nothing compared to that, and she knew it. “I need to go check the pizza.” She pushed at him, but his grip tightened in unspoken refusal.

  “Kate didn’t want to be burdened with a family and kids,” he said. “When Noah was born, she barely even acknowledged him. As I told you, she wanted to abort Lucas.” There was bitterness in his voice now, anger and guilt, emotions that touched her heart, because she knew what it was like to love someone who didn’t have any love to give.

  Instinctively, she put her hand over his and squeezed lightly.

  Jason flipped his hand over to hold hers, needing her touch as he re-opened memories that bit so deeply. “There was very little left in our marriage,” he said, recalling the silence of their condo when he’d get home late. The closed door to their bedroom telling him to sleep in the guest bedroom. The coolness of his wife’s body language when they ran into each other in the mornings. “And when Lucas died, there was nothing left between us. Kate disassociated herself from me and Noah. The marriage became in name only, if that.”

  Astrid turned to face him, and he saw compassion in her eyes, true understanding. He cupped her face and bent his head, brushing his lips over hers, needing the touch of someone so emotional and alive.

  “Did you divorce her?” There was an edge to Astrid’s voice, a ripple of judgment and fear.

  “No.” Shit, he should have. He should have had that mercy. “I decided that I couldn’t live like that anymore. I was reeling from Lucas’s death, and I wanted to try to hold onto the family. I rented a place on Nantucket for a week, and I ordered her to take the week off from work.”

  Astrid studied him. “Really?”

  “Yeah. She showed up two days late, on the eve of a huge storm, and I was pissed.” He ran his hands through Astrid’s hair, using the silkiness of the strands to ground him, to keep that night at bay. “It was bad shit, what went down between us that night. Things you don’t say to the person you’re married to.” Guilt burned in him for the blame he’d thrown at her for Lucas’s death in his attempt to breach that cold wall of emotional distance she’d erected around herself. “She got angry and walked out. She said she was going back to New York. She wanted to get out before the storm stranded her there, because s
he couldn’t abide being with me another moment.”

  Suddenly, Jason was back there in that night, standing there in the doorway of the cottage, watching Kate stalk down to the car she’d rented. The wind had been raging, the rain wild, the seas high and relentless, and he’d stood there and watched her go. He hadn’t tried to stop her. “The storm was closing in fast, but she bribed one of the pilots to take her anyway, and I didn’t stop her. I was just fucking tired of fighting with her, and I let her go.” He met Astrid’s gaze. “The plane crashed less than a half mile offshore. Both she and the pilot were dead.”

  “Oh.” Astrid’s hand went to her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  Jason gave her a grim smile. “See, that’s the thing, Astrid. I wasn’t sorry. Not the way I should have been. When the cops came and told me what had happened, all I felt was this huge sense of relief. Relief. Relief.” He met her gaze, baring the truth to the woman who needed to know what he was like, because she was stuck with him in her life, at least on some level. “My own wife had died in a tragic accident, and I didn’t feel even one moment of grief. I just sat there and thanked God that Noah would not have to grow up realizing he was stuck with a mother who didn’t love him. My son had lost his mother, and all I felt was relief.”

  That was it. That was all he had to say. That was who he was.

  Astrid stared at him, but he couldn’t read her expression. “What?” he urged. “Talk to me.”

  “And now,” she asked. “Do you feel sadness now?”

  He grimaced. “No, and I know I’m a total bastard for the fact I don’t. I know I betrayed Kate by letting her get on that plane when I knew how bad the weather was. I feel guilty about that, and every day I look at my son, I know that I’m responsible for the fact he doesn’t have a little brother or a mother. I fucked up his life, Astrid, and I’m making it worse with every choice I make, but no, I still don’t grieve Kate’s death, not the way I should. I grieve the fact that I don’t, and for what kind of a person that makes me.”

  Astrid couldn’t believe it, but she knew Jason was telling her the truth. He truly did not grieve the loss of his wife. “I don’t understand. How could you not care about her?”

  He shook his head. “I ask myself that every day.” His voice was anguished, tormented, but Astrid could barely register it, she was so consumed by his confession. How could he not care about the woman he’d made so many promises to? “It was my job to find a way to connect us. If I’d tried harder, if I’d cared about my marriage and my kids enough, there must have been a way to salvage everything. But I was working almost as hard as she was, and I didn’t do shit to make it happen.”

  “Wow.” She pulled away, staggered by the enormity of his confession. Was that what Paul had thought of her? Had a part of him been glad when she lost the baby, freeing him to move on and find the right woman? “Jason, I need to go—”

  “Don’t!” He grabbed her arms. “I’m trying to fix it,” he said urgently. “That’s why I moved to Maine. I quit my damn job. I’m not going to repeat that mistake. I’m going to do it right this time.” His grip softened on her arms. “I’m not going to walk away from you, Astrid. I lost everything before, and I won’t lose it again. That means you, and it means our child.”

  “No,” she shook her head, trying to pull away from him.

  Jason felt his heart split when Astrid rejected him. “Astrid!” He grabbed her hand, catching her as she tried to climb over the windowsill back into the carriage house.

  She spun back toward him, her eyes blazing. “Did you tell her that you loved her, Jason? When you asked her to marry you, did you promise forever? Did you?”

  He swore at the agony on her face. “Shit, yeah, Astrid. I meant it, too. I had no idea things would disintegrate the way they did—”

  “You couldn’t have meant it! If you love someone like that, you don’t have the right to stop loving them, to walk away from them—”

  “I didn’t walk away from her.” He leapt over the windowsill, grabbing her as she stumbled away from him. “I tried to save the marriage. I made her come to Nantucket. I didn’t walk away—”

  “You let her get on that plane!”

  “I know I did, but as God is my witness, I didn’t know she was going to die when she got on that plane! I’m not that much of a bastard, Astrid!” He yanked her over to him, refusing to let her retreat. “Don’t you get what I’m trying to tell you? I’m trying to show you that I fucking blew it before, and I know it, and I’m willing to do anything to make it work this time.” He gripped her shoulders. “I won’t let you down, and I won’t let our child down. No matter what. Ever.”

  “Isn’t that what you said to Kate when you proposed?” Tears were streaming down Astrid’s face. “Didn’t you make that promise before? How can men do that? How can men make those promises and then betray them?”

  And that’s when he knew. Astrid wasn’t talking about him anymore. She was talking about her own past. “Shit, Astrid, what did he do to you?” Jason didn’t even know who the “he” was, but there was no doubt that there was a man who had eviscerated the woman in his arms.

  “He left,” she said. “He promised me forever. But when our son was stillborn, he left me that same day.”

  Jason swore, his soul breaking for the pain in Astrid’s voice. “He left you in the hospital?”

  She nodded. “The doctor came into my room and told us that I’d lost the baby, and he said I was still in danger. I was devastated. I was terrified I was going to die right then.”

  “Shit, Astrid.” He started to reach for her, but she held up her hands to block him.

  “The minute the doctor left, my fiancé looked at me and said that since there was no baby, he wouldn’t burden his family by making me a part of it. Then he dropped five thousand dollars in cash on the bed to pay for my medical bills and walked out. I never heard from him again.” She met his gaze. “I’ve never told anyone that before,” she whispered.

  “Thank you for trusting me.” But even as he spoke the words, a dark, deep fury began to roil through Jason, a primal anger that seemed to lash through his veins. “Astrid.”

  She lifted her chin, her eyes glittering with tears she was fighting so hard to control. “Why?” she asked. “Why do men make promises of forever and love, and then turn it off and stop caring?”

  As he looked at her ashen face, Jason had no answers to give her. “There are no excuses,” he told her. “Your ex-fiancé was a bastard beyond words, there’s no doubt about that. My guess is that he never loved you the way you deserved to be loved, and he knew he could never deliver what he promised.”

  She stared at him. “That’s no excuse.”

  “No, it’s not.” Jason took a deep breath and reached for her hand, sliding his fingers through her cold ones. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I spent thirteen years married to a woman who never loved me, not even for a minute. She married me because she wanted to marry a doctor, like her, and that never changed. I was the one who changed. When we got married, all we wanted was to be doctors. I wanted away from my past, from the burdens of family. We promised each other a dual career marriage, and I changed the rules.”

  Astrid frowned at him, but he could tell she was listening.

  “I decided I wanted kids. I wanted a wife, not a business associate who shared my bed. I changed the rules, and she didn’t want it.” He gripped her hand. “This time, I know what I want, and I’m going to make it happen.”

  She searched his face. “What is it that you want, Jason? Our child? A woman who will be a perfect, loving mother and doting wife?”

  He knew the answer should be yes, that he wanted the family, the whole package, and the scene of domestic tranquility that were the stuff of his fantasies. But as he looked at the woman standing before him and he saw the conviction in her eyes that she could not offer him any of that, he knew what answer he was going to give her. He was going to tell her the truth that she needed to hear.

 
; “You, Astrid.” He traced his finger along her hairline, brushing her hair back from her face. “You’re what I want.”

  She closed her eyes, and he felt her body shudder in response. “How can you say that?” Her voice trembled. “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know you’re a woman who carries so much weight in her heart. You’re courageous and brave, even though inside you’re so soft and vulnerable that I want to cradle your heart in my hands and protect it from all the world.” Astrid opened her eyes, searching his face, but he didn’t stop.

  “You’re the woman who breathes life into my soul,” he said softly as he framed her face with his hands. “You force me to step up and be the man I want to be, because you deserve no less.” He pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth, smiling when she closed her eyes, losing herself in the intimacy. “Your love for your friends is so deep, but you don’t know how to trust anymore.” He kissed the other side of her mouth. “You make me want to lose myself in your soul, and to make the world a better place so that you can thrive and come back to life.”

  Her eyes fluttered open, and there was so much yearning in them that he smiled. “Plus,” he whispered, “You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever encountered in my life. If I could make love to you every night until the end of time, it still wouldn’t be enough.” And then he kissed her, showing her that he meant every damn word of it.

  Chapter Eleven

  His kiss breathed life into her very soul.

  Astrid went still under Jason’s kisses, almost undone by the intensity of her response to him. Dear God, it felt so amazing to be kissed by him. His lovely, heartfelt words were still reverberating through her. So many beautiful sentiments, the kind she’d dreamed of someone saying to her.

  Somehow, despite her best efforts to the contrary, Jason saw her as she really was. He saw every inch of her. He’d broken through her artificially glowing exterior, delving right into the pain in her soul, just as he had that very first time they’d kissed.