“This wasn’t your fault, Micah.” She pulled the top sheet taut and folded the top back.
“She only came here because of me,” he said, reaching for a replacement duvet, this one brick red, and flipping it out to cover the mattress.
“Still doesn’t make it your fault.” Kelly stacked pillows in fresh cases against the headboard. “How did she even find you?”
“Easy enough.” Scowling, he too tossed a few pillows onto the bed. “Like I told you. Social media is everywhere. Someone in Banner probably put it out on Facebook or Twitter that I was here. That’s enough to get every nut in the world moving.” Shaking his head, he smoothed wrinkles that weren’t there. “She shows up in town, talks to a few people, finds out where I am and bingo. Naked in my bed.”
That was just beyond creepy. Living your life knowing there were thousands of would-be stalkers out there, ready to hunt you down and barge into your life? Kelly shuddered. “I don’t know how you deal with this stuff all the time.”
“It’s why I don’t stay anywhere for very long,” he said, walking around the end of the bed to come to her side. “And now that one has found me, others will be coming too. I can’t stay, Kelly.”
Panic blossomed in the center of her chest and sent out tendrils of ice that wrapped around her heart and squeezed. This was what she’d been feeling since their holiday in California. If Naked Misty hadn’t shown up, it would have been something else. For whatever reason, Micah wanted to get away from Banner. From Kelly. “But...you haven’t finished your book yet.”
“I’m close though,” he said. “I can finish it somewhere else.”
She was losing him. Standing right in front of him and he was slipping away. “Why should you have to move out because of a crazy person?”
He sighed, dropped both hands onto her shoulders and met her eyes squarely. “It’s not just her. Things have gotten...complicated between us, and I think it’d be easier if I left early.”
“Easier? On who?”
“On both of us,” he said, and stepped back. “Better to stop this before things get more tangled up.”
But she wanted those three months. She wanted Micah here for the first snow, for Christmas. For New Year’s Eve. She wanted him here always.
“Micah—” She broke off because anything she said now would sound like begging him to stay and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Couldn’t make herself say I love you, either. He wouldn’t believe her any more than he had Misty. Or, worse, he would believe her and feel sorry for her, and she refused to put herself in the position of having to accept either reaction.
“It’s the best way, Kelly.” His gaze locked with hers, and though she tried to read what he was feeling, thinking, it was as if he’d erected a barrier across his eyes to keep her out.
“Halloween’s in a few days,” he said. “I’ll stay for that, okay? I’d like to see the kids go through that maze after spending so much time building the damn thing...”
A few days. That was all she had with him. So she’d take it and never let him know what it cost her to stay quiet. To let him go without asking him to stay.
“I’d like that, too,” she said, and forced a smile that felt brittle and cold. “Where will you go?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets. “There’s a hotel in Hawaii I like. Maybe I’ll go there for a few months.”
“Hawaii.” Well, that couldn’t be farther from Utah, could it? He was so anxious to be apart from her, he was sticking an ocean between them. Couldn’t be clearer than that. “Okay, then.”
He reached for her again but let his hand fall before he touched her, and that, Kelly thought, was so sad it nearly broke her heart.
“It’s best this way, Kelly.”
“Probably,” she said, agreeing with him if only to see a flicker of surprise flash across his face. “Don’t worry about me, Micah. I was good before you got here and I’ll be fine when you leave.” She wondered idly if her tongue would simply rot and fall out of her head on the strength of those lies. She picked up the dirty sheets and the duvet and held them to her like a shield. “I’ll just go start the washing.”
Kelly felt his gaze on her as she left the room, so she didn’t look back. There was only so much she was willing to put herself through.
* * *
The morning of Halloween, Kelly had the black lights up and ready, the CD of haunted house noises—growls, moans, chains rattling and a great witch’s cackle—loaded up and a mountain of candy for all of the trick-or-treaters.
She also had the same unhappy stomach she’d been dealing with for days. She wasn’t worse, but she wasn’t getting better, either. Which was why she’d made a quick trip to the drugstore. Not being a complete idiot, she didn’t go to the mom-and-pop shop in Banner, instead driving down to Ogden to shop anonymously. One thing Kelly didn’t need was the gossips in town speculating on if she was pregnant or not before she knew herself. At that thought, her stomach did another quick spin.
Micah was in his office typing away—pretty much where he’d been since Naked Misty had crashed into their lives uninvited, precipitating his announcement that he was leaving early.
The only time Kelly saw him lately was at night in bed. And though he might be trying to keep distance between them during the day, in the darkness Micah turned to her. Sex was just as staggering, but shadowed now with a thread of sorrow that neither of them wanted to talk about.
Kelly wanted to be with him as much as she could, but at the same time, whenever they came together, another tiny piece of her heart broke off and shattered at her feet. Seconds, minutes, hours were ticking away. All of her life she’d loved Halloween, and now for the first time, she hated it. Because he’d be leaving in the morning and Kelly was already dreading it.
She looked into the mirror over the bathroom sink and saw the misery in her own eyes. Her face was paler than usual, her freckles standing out like gold dust on vanilla ice cream. Kelly lifted her fingers to touch the cold surface of Micah’s emerald as it shone brightly in the overhead light.
The tick of her kitchen timer sounded like a tiny heartbeat in the bathroom. Tiny heartbeat. Was it possible? Was she pregnant? And if she was, what then? When the buzzer sounded, letting her know the three minutes were up, Kelly shut down the timer, picked up the early-pregnancy-test stick and held her breath, still unsure what she was hoping for.
“A plus sign.” She released that breath and giddily took another one. “Plus sign means pregnant.” She laughed and suddenly she knew exactly how she felt about this. Kelly grinned at her reflection. All of her doubts and worries disappeared, washed away by a wave of pure joy. “You don’t have the flu. You have a baby. Micah’s baby.”
She couldn’t stop smiling. The woman in the mirror looked like a fool, standing there with that wide grin on her face, but Kelly didn’t mind. This was...amazing. The most amazing thing that had ever happened to her. When Sean died, Kelly had never intended to remarry, so she’d had to accept that she’d never have children. And that was painful.
Then along came Micah, who swept her off her feet and into a tangle of emotions that had left her reeling right from the first time he’d kissed her. The misery of the last few days, pretending she was all right with him leaving just slid off her shoulders. He was leaving, but he had also given her a gift. A wonderful gift. When Micah was gone, she’d still have a part of him with her. Always. She wouldn’t be alone. She’d have her child and the memories of the man who’d given that child to her.
“I have to tell him,” she said aloud, and looked down at the pregnancy test stick again as if to reassure herself that this was really happening. It was. Even though Micah was leaving, he had a right to know about his child. Her feelings were her own, but this baby, they shared.
Still smiling, she laid
one hand over her belly in a protective gesture. “We’ll be okay, you know. Just you and me, we’ll be good.”
Steeling herself, she nodded at her reflection, feeling new strength and determination fill her. When Micah left, her heart would be crushed. But she would have her baby to look after now and that was enough to keep her strong. “I’ll tell him tonight. When Halloween’s over. I’ll tell him. And then I’ll let him go.”
* * *
Halloween was a rush of noise, laughter, shrieks and a seemingly never-ending stream of children. Micah had never done Halloween as a foster kid. And as an adult, he’d kept his distance from kids on general principle, so this holiday had never made much of an impact on him. Until celebrating it with Kelly.
Up and down the block, porch lights were on and pumpkins glowed. Even the two nosy sisters, Margie and Sally, were across the street sitting on their front porch. They were bundled up against the cold and sipping tea, but they clearly wanted to watch all the kids.
The pumpkins Micah had taken Kelly to buy on their first ride together were carved into faces and shining with glow sticks inside them. Orange lights were stretched out along the porch railing. Black crepe paper fluttered from the gingerbread trim on the house and twisted in the wind. Polyester spiderwebs were strung out everywhere, and ghosts were suspended from the big oak tree out front.
Kelly was dressed up, of course, as her idea of a farmer, in overalls, a long-sleeved plaid shirt and work boots. Her hair was in pigtails and the emerald peeked out from behind the collar of her shirt. From the porch Micah handed out candy to those who made it through the haunted maze. Kelly had stationed herself in front of the maze to walk the little kids through personally so they wouldn’t be scared. Cries of “Trick or treat!” rang out up and down the block. Parents kept stopping to congratulate him on his engagement, and Micah had to go along with the lies because he’d promised.
He wondered, though, what all of these people would think of him tomorrow when he left town, supposedly walking out on Kelly? He frowned. Good thing he didn’t care.
Passing out candy like it was about to be banned, Micah glanced around the yard and knew he was right to leave early. This wasn’t his home. The sooner he got to a nice anonymous hotel the better. For everyone. Hell, he was handing out candy. He was carving pumpkins, for God’s sake. Too much was changing and he didn’t like it.
Even the tone of the book he’d been working on had changed. As if Kelly and what he’d found here with her had invaded even his fictional world. His heroine was now stronger, sexier, funnier than before. She stood up for herself and drove the hero as crazy as Kelly made Micah. Life was definitely imitating art. Or more the other way around.
“Micah!” A small hand tugged at the hem of Micah’s coat, splintering his thoughts, which was just as well, since he had at least three hundred pounds of candy to give out.
Jacob, dressed like a lion, stared up at him. His lion’s mane was yellow yarn and his nose had been colored black to match the whiskers drawn across his cheeks. “Are you scared cuz I’m a lion?”
“You bet.” No point in dampening the excitement in the boy’s eyes just because Micah was in a crap mood. “You make a good one.”
“I can roar.”
“I believe you.”
“And you can come see my pumpkin all lit up, can’t you? I put a happy face on it, but Daddy cut it cuz I’m too little to hold the knife.”
“I will later,” Micah said, wondering how he and this little boy had become friends. “Don’t you have to go with your brothers to get more candy?”
“Yeah, and I can have lots my dad says even though Mommy says no cuz daddies are the boss when Mom’s not looking my dad says and Mommy laughed at him but said okay.”
Micah blinked. That was a lot of words for one sentence. He wondered what the kid would be like next year. Or the year after. The kid would grow up in this town, play football, fall in love, get married and start the whole cycle over again. But Micah wouldn’t be there to see any of it. Soon Jacob would forget all about a friend named Micah. And wasn’t that irritating? “No, it’s not.”
“What?”
He looked down at the tiny lion. “Nothing, Jacob. Go on. Find your brothers. Have fun.”
“Okay!”
As he ran off, Micah looked around and realized that he didn’t belong there. He wasn’t a part of this town. He could pretend to be. But the truth was he didn’t belong anywhere and that’s how he liked it. Who the hell else could just pick up and take off for Hawaii at a moment’s notice? He was damn lucky living just the way he wanted to, answering to no one. He liked his life just fine and it was time to get back to it.
Several minutes later, he saw Jacob’s parents rush up to Kelly, talking fast, looking all around frantically. Something was wrong. Micah left the candy bowl on the porch and took the steps down through the crowd. “What’s going on?”
Kelly looked at him, worry etched into her features. “Jacob’s missing.”
He snorted. “No, he’s not. He was just here a few minutes ago.”
Jacob’s mother, Nora, shook her head. “Jonas saw Jacob run into the woods. He was following a deer and Jonas ran to get us instead of going in after him.”
“It was the right thing to do,” her husband said. “Or they’d both be lost. You stay here, Nora, in case he finds his way out on his own. I’ve got my cell. Call me if you see him.” Then he looked at Kelly, Micah and a few of the other adults. “If we split up, we should be able to find him fast.”
Kelly pulled her cell phone out of her overalls, hit the flashlight app and looked up at Micah. “He’s only three.”
Micah was already headed to the woods, fighting a hard, cold knot that had settled in his gut. “We’ll find him.”
The woods were thick and dark and filled with the kind of shadows that lived in Micah’s imagination. It was the perfect setting for murder. Wisps of fog, moonlight trickling through bare branches of trees, the rustle of dead leaves on the ground and the quick, scuttling noise of something rushing through them. It was as if he’d written the scene himself. But it wasn’t so good for a lost little boy. They moved as quickly as they could, their flashlights bobbing and dancing in the darkness. Roots jutted from the ground and Kelly tripped more than once as they hurried through the trees.
Kelly called for Jacob over and over, but there was no answer. The flashlight beams looked eerie, shining past the skeletons of trees to get lost in the pines. Where the hell was he? He hadn’t had enough time to go far. Micah fought down his own sense of frustration and worry, but they came rushing back up. Anything could happen to a kid that size. His writer’s mind listed every possibility and each was worse than the last.
He shouldn’t have let the kid wander off to find his brothers alone.
“God,” Kelly murmured, turning in a slow circle. “Where is he?”
“Hiding? Chasing the deer?” Micah strained his eyes, looking from right to left. “Who the hell knows?”
From a distance came the calls of the others searching for the little boy, and their flashlights looked like ghosts moving through the shadows. Micah had to wonder why Jacob wasn’t answering. Was he hurt? God. Unconscious? In the next instant, Micah thought he heard something so he pulled Kelly to a stop.
“Listen. There it is again.” He whipped his head around. “Over there.”
“Jacob?” Micah shouted and this time he was sure he heard the little boy yell, “I’m lost.”
“Thank God.” Kelly ran right behind him and in seconds they’d found him. Jacob was scared and cold and his sneaker was caught under a tree root.
“The deer ran away,” he said as if that explained everything.
Micah’s heart squeezed painfully. “The deer doesn’t matter. You okay, buddy? Are you hurt?”
“No,” he said, “I
’m stuck. And I’m cold. And I spilled my candy.”
Kelly’s flashlight caught his overturned pumpkin basket with the candy bars scattered around it. She quickly scooped them all up.
“See? Kelly’s got your stuff and we can fix the rest,” Micah said. “Kelly, call Jacob’s dad. Tell him he’s okay.”
“Already on it,” she said, and he heard her talking.
“Am I in trouble?” Jacob rubbed his eyes, smearing his whiskers.
Once he freed the boy’s foot, Micah picked him up. “I don’t think so. Your parents are probably going to be too happy to see you to be mad.”
“Okay, good. I still need to get more candy.” Jacob wrapped his arms around Micah’s neck. “When we get back you wanna see my pumpkin?”
Kelly laughed. Micah caught her eye and grinned. Kids were damn resilient. More so than the adults they scared the life out of. He took a breath and slowly released it. With the boy’s arms around his shoulders and Kelly smiling at him, Micah knew he’d become too attached. Not just to Kelly, but to this place. Even this little boy.
And as they left the shadows and stepped into the light again, Micah knew he’d stayed too long. He had to leave. While he still could.
* * *
A part of Kelly wanted to do just what he was sure she would. Cry, ask him to stay. But none of that would help. Just as she’d told Terry, if she had to force him to be with her, then what they had wasn’t worth having.
She wouldn’t tell him she loved him. He should know that already from the way they were together—and if he didn’t, it was because he didn’t want to know. So Kelly would keep her feelings to herself and remain perfectly rational.
Too bad it did nothing for the hole opening up in the center of her chest.
“I called for the jet,” Micah said, stuffing his folded clothes into a huge black duffel. His suits were already in a garment bag laid out on the bed. Their bed.
“So you’ll be in Hawaii late tonight.”
Fiancé in Name Only Page 14
