All He Ever Wanted

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  He’s a family man.

  You knew it, and you didn’t stay away.

  She shook her head, even as her hand crept up and grazed the soft bristles blurring his hard jaw. “I can’t do this, Cam.”

  His jaw flexed against her palm and she went to draw away, but he grabbed her hand, holding it there. Tight. “Why?” His voice was raw. As raw as she felt inside.

  Oh, what a fool she was. She was supposed to help keep people safe. And now she was only causing pain. To her. To him.

  But it was better to do it now, rather than later.

  Wasn’t it?

  “I’m not cut out for…you know. Relationships.”

  He snorted and swore. “That’s bull.”

  She felt the blood drain out of her head again, and worked her hand free of his. “I don’t have to convince you.”

  If she could only convince herself.

  She slid off the mattress, away from him, and blindly swept around for her clothes only to realize they were still lying near the front door. She bunched the sheet around her body, and headed for the doorway.

  “Don’t.”

  She tripped a little. Snatched up the offending edge and moved faster.

  “Faith.”

  She couldn’t look back to see if Cam followed her.

  If she looked back, she’d weaken. And if she weakened, she’d agree to anything he suggested. Anything, as long as she had him in her life.

  One step at a time.

  She just had to get through one step at a time.

  Yank on her jeans.

  Pull her sweater over her head.

  She made the mistake of glancing up.

  Cam stood there. His eyes narrowed. His arms crossed over his wide chest. He’d pulled on his jeans, too, but they were only half-fastened.

  She left the sheet on the floor where it lay. Grabbed up her purse. Fumbled with her boots, only to give up and just clasp them to her chest.

  She scrambled with the door, and tore out into the frozen dawn as if the devil was at her heels.

  But it was just a man who was behind her. A good, decent, family man, who had the tools in his very being to break her heart.

  And if she stayed—oh, God, if she stayed—when that day came, she wouldn’t survive it.

  Not this time.

  The sidewalk burned so cold against her feet as she ran to her SUV. When she climbed behind the wheel, she dropped the keys twice in her fumbling attempt to get them in the ignition.

  Then the engine caught. Roared like some beast in pain.

  She looked back at the house.

  He stood on the porch.

  She hauled in a breath, only it sounded more like a sob.

  And the sight of him wavered because of the tears flooding her eyes.

  She shoved the SUV into drive and flattened her foot on the gas pedal. The vehicle shot forward.

  Some portion of her mind was coherent enough to be grateful for the empty streets courtesy of the early hour on a Sunday morning. Because she managed to make it to her condo without mishap.

  The phone was ringing even before she made it inside. Had obviously been ringing a number of times. And the message light was already blinking.

  The ringing stopped. Cam’s voice came on. “I don’t know what’s going on, Faith, but you better damn well tell me you made it home safely, or I’m coming over even though you’ve made it more than plain that you don’t want to see me.” His voice was tight. Angry.

  Hurt.

  She picked up the phone. “I’m home.”

  “Good.”

  He hung up.

  She cupped the phone against her stomach and slowly slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. Eventually, the phone started beeping.

  She pressed the button, disconnecting the call.

  Then she lay down on her side.

  And cried.

  Cameron stared at the phone sitting on his desk.

  His hand reached out to pick it up again. To call her again. To tell her anything that would get her back.

  Might as well try to rewind the past twenty-four hours. He’d have as good a chance of success.

  He shoved himself out of his chair and it rolled back, tipping on two wheels and crashing over, knocking hard into the wall. A framed oil painting Laura had picked up at an estate sale the first year they were married slid straight down, bouncing off the base of the chair and landing flat on the floor.

  He exhaled roughly. Started to just leave it there. He’d never liked the painting, with its fussy strokes and jarring colors. But Laura had loved it.

  And he’d loved her.

  Loved.

  He raked his hands through his hair and slowly went over to the painting. Crouched down and set it upright against the wall.

  He’d loved Laura.

  He’d made a life here in Thunder Canyon that would have made her happy.

  But that was all in the past.

  She’d died. And he was finally starting to feel alive again.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, digging his fingers into the pain that squatted malevolently behind his eyes.

  And the woman responsible for shoving him into the land of the living couldn’t face the mere idea of a relationship with him without coming unglued.

  He straightened and left the painting leaning against the wall.

  Living again sucked.

  Chris Taylor stared at his sister’s blond head and struggled hard to keep the worry out of his voice as he leaned his hip against the corner of her desk at the fire station. “You going to drive in to Bozeman for the basketball game tonight?”

  She didn’t look up from the report she was typing. “I’m on call,” she finally answered. “And half the town is heading over there, anyway.” She finally cast him a look. “Is that the pressing question that dragged you over here?”

  “We were supposed to have lunch today remember?”

  Her expression told him clearly enough that she hadn’t. “Sorry,” she mumbled, and looked back at her computer screen.

  He sighed mightily. He’d waited for her at The Hitching Post for twenty minutes before realizing she wasn’t going to show. Only thing he’d accomplished while he was there was getting Juliet Rivera off her feet for about ten minutes. As far as he was concerned, the young woman needed to be off her feet permanently until her baby made its appearance.

  He straightened off Faith’s desk and grabbed the side chair nearby to pull it up closer. He sat down. Grabbed the arms of her chair and physically turned her until she was facing him. “Talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Yeah. Right.” He kept her from turning her chair back toward her desk. “Not so easy. I want to know what’s going on. Mom called me last night. Said you sounded weird on the phone the other day when she tried calling you. Jill called me this morning to complain about you forgetting to mail her one of those crocheted baby blankets of yours for her girlfriend’s shower, and she said you hung up on her when she bitched at you about it. So what gives?”

  “Nothing is going on.” She reached forward and pinched the inside of his arm, hard. He yelped and let go of her seat. She turned back to her desk. “Absolutely nothing, and that is exactly the way I want it.”

  “This is about the coach.”

  She typed, but he could see on the screen that it was more gobbledygook than words. “This is about nothing.”

  “Yeah, that washes real well, kiddo.”

  She glared at him.

  Chris saw the glisten in his sister’s eyes, though, and stifled a sigh. “They’re just worried about you,” he said quietly. They, hell. He was worried, too. But telling Faith that wouldn’t do him any good. “Saw Erik Stevenson today,” he said deliberately.

  At that, her eyes widened, her attention definitely on him. “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah. Just a follow-up visit.”

  Her relief was palpable.

  “He was full of talk ab
out how his dad signed him up for rock climbing over at Tanya’s place,” he added.

  Her eyebrows shot up. “He did?”

  “Haven’t talked to Tanya much this week, either, have you?”

  Her eyebrows lowered. “It’s been a busy week.”

  And his sister was hiding out from the world. “He’s also signed the kid up for Little League baseball,” he informed her. “You know, Faith, I’m sorry about what Jess put you through. But he was a selfish jerk. He was selfish before you married him. And he was selfish after you were unmarried. You can’t have kids. I know. I’m sorry. But there are a lot of people a helluva lot worse off than you.”

  Her brows drew together, stricken. “I know that.”

  “Do you?” He dragged her chair around again. “Word around town is that you and the coach haven’t been seen in the same five-block radius since last week.”

  Her lashes swept down, but not quickly enough to hide the stark pain in them, and his irritation dissolved. “Do you love him?”

  “What? No! Of course not.”

  Methinks she doth protest too much, he thought. “Okay. Just asking.”

  She slid her attention back to her computer. “Stop asking. There’s nothing to say.”

  He rubbed his thumb down her arm. “You still haven’t told anyone, have you. About the infertility.”

  Her face turned red. She eyed him. “No, but if you don’t keep your voice down, anyone passing through the station here will know.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You had a staph infection, Faith. When you were a teenager. Nobody could have predicted the effect it left behind.”

  “Nobody could have predicted,” she agreed tightly. “And I’m not infertile. I’m sterile. A revelation that made Jess immediately start looking for a new wife who could produce kids. End of story. And Cam…”

  He waited.

  She exhaled through her teeth. “Sooner or later—probably sooner, given the things he said—he’s going to want more children. And I can’t give that to him. And I can’t watch another man I lo—care about, walk away from me because of my failure.”

  He wanted to latch on to the word she wouldn’t let herself say just as much as he wanted to throttle her for the word she had said. Failure. “You’re physically incapable of producing a child,” he said—quietly, because he wouldn’t entirely put it past Faith to pound him if he didn’t. “It’s a fact, not a failure.” And it was a fact he knew, only because at her most desperate, she’d sought his professional opinion.

  “Well, I’ve dealt with it as much as I intend to.”

  He stood. “Honey, you haven’t dealt with it, at all. If you had, you wouldn’t still be keeping it a secret.” He glanced around the station house where a half-dozen firefighters were moving around doing various tasks from filing to polishing the inside of the windows. “And I don’t mean from these guys. I mean from Mom and Dad. From our sisters. From the man you lo—” He hesitated deliberately, watching her eyes widen as if daring him to say it. The pager at his waist buzzed, and he automatically pulled it free to check the display.

  Lunchtime was over.

  “How’re the new residents coming along?”

  He took pity, allowing her dogged change of subject. “I’m surviving them. One’s got an attitude that Thunder Canyon isn’t exactly the pinnacle of medical achievements.”

  “Too bad you can’t tell him to take a hike.”

  “Her.” A damned pretty her, at that.

  He leaned down and kissed the top of Faith’s head, putting Dr. Zoe Hart out of his head. “Don’t let Jess’s failure where you two were concerned control your future, Faith. Maybe you might think about that.”

  He left, sketching a wave at the fire truck that was just pulling in from a call.

  His pager buzzed again.

  He sighed a little and quickened his step.

  The E.R. seemed to be getting busier with each passing day, and every other person who came through seemed to be running a temperature fueled by gold fever.

  The distinctive yellow school buses passed Faith on the highway between Bozeman and Thunder Canyon shortly after midnight.

  Standing well off the side of the road next to her SUV with Jim Shepherd, she stared after the taillights until they dwindled to nothing in the dark.

  “Probably your basketball team,” Jim murmured, handing a coil of nylon rope over to her.

  She nodded and tucked it away in the back of her SUV. She didn’t want to wonder how the team had done.

  She wondered anyway.

  So she focused harder on the task at hand. They’d already loaded up Jim’s equipment. Their engines were running, sending wisps of white exhaust curling into the night. “Maybe it’ll help cut down on lost cross-country skiers when Caleb Douglas gets that ski resort of his up and running. At this point, I think we’re close to breaking a record on this kind of call.”

  “Might be.” Jim tugged at his ear for a moment. “You doing okay?”

  The slick fabric of the SAR jacket she’d bought to replace the one she’d had to leave in the Queen of Hearts rustled as she closed her tailgate. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Her boss shrugged. “You just seemed preoccupied.”

  “I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.”

  He let out a breath. “Faith, it wasn’t a judgment on your performance. In another year, you’ll probably be the ranking member. I was just asking.”

  She hesitated. “I’m fine. Really. I just…have a few personal issues to deal with.”

  “Well. If you want to talk, you know where I am.”

  She nodded. Watched him walk toward his truck and climb in. But he waited until she’d gotten into her own vehicle and turned it toward Thunder Canyon before he set off in the opposite direction.

  Her hands tightened around the steering wheel. Talk. Maybe it made her the biggest coward on the planet, but she just didn’t want to talk. What was the point of talking about something that could not be changed?

  Her foot pressed harder on the accelerator, and intentionally or not, she soon had the three buses within eyesight, again.

  She hung back, though, just following along. She had the scanner turned down low, but not so low that she didn’t hear Cheryl’s chatter about the game.

  Cam’s team had won.

  Faith’s hands tightened around the wheel a little more. She had no difficulty imagining the celebration that would occur upon their return. It was a wonder the buses weren’t simply floating home.

  The highway headed uphill and the buses slowed some, laboring against the grade while her SUV ate it up. She flicked her blinker and passed the first bus. Through the windows, she could see arms waving, hats flying.

  The same was true of the second bus, and the one in the lead, when she passed that one, too.

  She even saw Erik, who noticed her. He pulled down the window as far as it would go and stuck his head right out, waving madly, his hair whipping around his head like mad.

  Aching inside, she waved, too.

  Then a long arm scooped Erik’s head back inside the window. Faith caught a glimpse of Cam’s face. He eyed her for a moment.

  Then slid the window up.

  Headlights were in the oncoming lane and Faith accelerated, passing the bus and moving back into her own lane.

  But she was shaking.

  Cam hadn’t even smiled.

  What did you expect?

  She drove the rest of the way back to town, feeling as if Cam’s dark eyes were boring into the back of her spine. It wasn’t on her way, but she found herself passing The Hitching Post, all the same. The place was still lit up. Cars lined the street and filled the lot.

  She fully intended to drive on by. To go home. To fold herself in a blanket in the corner of her couch and pretend that she would be able to sleep, the same way she’d done for the past five nights.

  She drove around the lot. Made herself a parking spot where there was none.

  Inside, th
e grill was already packed. Many had clearly already returned from the game. If there was a patron in the grill who wasn’t a basketball fan, she figured they would quickly become one, or they’d quickly be escorted to the door.

  “Hey.” Tanya grabbed her elbow. “Didn’t expect to see you. Toby and I are over in the corner, but we can make some room for you. Did you find the skier?”

  Faith shrugged out of her slick coat and followed her friend. “Yeah. Safe and sound, but cold. We sent him to the hospital for a look-see.” She pointed at an empty bar stool near a group of people. They waved at it, and she carried it over to Tanya’s small round table. If she craned her neck a little, she could see the door. She’d see when the team came in and escape through the back.

  “Oh, man.” Toby’s sparkling brown eyes were fastened on someone across the room. “Look at Polly Caruthers. She is so suh-wheet.” He slid off his stool, all long legs and gangling arms. “Gotta go, Ma.”

  Tanya rolled her eyes. “I’m Ma, now. Lovely, huh?” But she was smiling. “Kids. Gotta love ’em. Even when they’re twelve-year-old boys who’ve discovered girls don’t have cooties after all.”

  Faith toyed with one of the round cardboard coasters sitting in the center of the table. “Speaking of kids,” she said slowly.

  A tall waitress rushed by the table, settling a glass of water in front of Faith. “What can I get you?”

  A vat of courage?

  She ordered a diet cola. Figured it would be easier to obtain.

  “Speaking of kids,” Tanya prompted after the woman scurried off, menus tucked under her arm and an empty tray in her hand. “What about them?”

  Faith flipped the coaster over. Took a deep breath. Expelled it in a rush. “I can’t have any,” she said bluntly.

  Tanya blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t make me repeat it,” Faith said thickly.

  “Oh, honey.” Tanya covered her hand with hers. “Just because you and Jess didn’t…” Her voice trailed off at the look Faith gave her. Realization hit. “Oh. Oh.” She grimaced. “Well, that schmuck. He never was good enough for you.”

  The last thing Faith expected to do was to laugh. But she did. It came out a little rusty, but it still came. “Sure. You say that now.”