Harlequin Special Edition November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2

by Lilian Darcy

  He hated when his mother brought up the subject, but to her credit, she knew that—hence the hesitation—and didn’t do it often. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “I seriously don’t know, Mom.”

  An image of Lee flashed into his mind and he had to fight to stop himself from grinning. They’d texted a couple of times, but hadn’t talked. He liked that she never crowded him, never asked for more than he wanted to give. In fact, she seemed even more independent than he was, in some ways.

  Was there a future in what they had?

  He didn’t see the need to ask himself that yet, and apparently Lee didn’t, either. Even if the job came through here in Idaho, and even if he decided to take it, he wouldn’t be starting for another couple months. There would be time at that point for them both to think about whether they wanted to say goodbye or try for something longer and stronger.

  “I wish you could tell me,” his mother said wistfully, in response to his inadequate answer.

  “I know you do. But how can I? Maybe it’s the kind of bridge I can only cross if I get to it.”

  “And no bridges visible on the road ahead?”

  “Don’t think so.” He added, after a moment, “I’ve been seeing someone, but I don’t think it’s serious.” He said “don’t think” instead of “don’t know if” quite deliberately, so that Mom wouldn’t get her hopes up. But she was hopeful by nature, so his careful word choice didn’t really help.

  “You didn’t think it was serious with Sloane.”

  “And it wasn’t,” he answered.

  “She was having—”

  He cut her off quickly. “Yes, and that was a mistake, and it was the only reason we were together, in the end. And we weren’t even really together.”

  His mother sighed. She’d come of age in the early seventies, when the boundaries and rules in relationships had begun to lose the rigidity of earlier generations, but still, she and his dad had been married for thirty-six years. She believed in monogamy and commitment and pretty weddings, and Mac could see her biting her tongue sometimes, to stop herself from begging him to do it properly.

  Find the right girl, marry her, start a family.

  If anything, Dad was even worse.

  “Be careful, Mac, won’t you?” she said, the same way she and his dad always did.

  “I will,” he promised her, without having the slightest idea how to do that. Careful? Get Lee to fill in a questionnaire about her attitudes?

  He heard the ring tone on his phone, coming from the couch in the living room where he’d put it down. He went and grabbed it before it switched to voice mail, and heard his friend Sam. “Hey, Mac, you want to make it earlier tonight? Brandon’s done with his game. He just called and he’s already at the bar, so I thought I’d head on over. Shall I swing by for you?”

  “Yeah, do that, that’d be good,” he said.

  “See you in ten.”

  He put the phone in his pocket and went back into the kitchen. “Change of plan. Sam’s picking me up early.”

  “Oh, so you won’t eat with us, after all.” Mom’s disappointment was clear.

  “Sorry.” But he wasn’t, at heart. He didn’t want any more difficult questions about how he felt about the past or what he planned for the future, and if Mom was in this kind of a mood, she might not have the willpower to stop asking.

  * * *

  Mac seemed really happy to see her when he got back from Idaho. Lee liked that about him. He didn’t pretend. He didn’t use his emotions as a power play or a way of keeping her guessing. When he was happy, it showed. When he was bored, it showed. When he was tired, same thing.

  He arrived in the evening, having flown from Spokane via Seattle to Denver, where he’d left his pickup in the long-stay airport parking four days ago. He sent her a text about an hour before he got in. In at eight. Too late to see you?

  She texted back, Eight is fine, then wondered why she hadn’t given herself more time. She could have put him off until tomorrow. She’d made her decisions and had no real reason to think he wouldn’t be happy about them—he might even be relieved—but the thought of talking about them scared her, all the same.

  How did you say something like this? Was it better or worse that there were friends of the Narmans using the house for an extended weekend, so she was back in her little cat nest of an apartment? There was so little room in here for all the emotion that might soon be flying around....

  At her door, he started smiling as soon as he saw her. He heaved his bag inside, then crushed her in his arms. “I’m wiped,” he announced. “So good to be back. Ton of stuff to tell you and talk about.”

  “So good to see you. Very, very good. Stuff to talk about, too.” She stretched up and rubbed her cheek against his before turning into the kiss he had waiting for her, a big, hearty, sexy one, with one of those rumbling, satisfied sounds that came from deep within his broad chest.

  The smell of his skin was so delicious she wanted to stay like this for the rest of the evening. Not even undress or make love or talk or anything, just stay like this, wrapped in his arms, smelling his familiar scent, feeling the strength and the warmth, feeling wanted.

  Would he guess that there was something going on? She was jittery and emotional and unsettled, and despite the picture she’d created for her future with the baby, it still didn’t seem as if it was really happening.

  Pregnant. A baby.

  Should she have waited? Should she have held herself in limbo and not made any decisions at all until she’d sounded him out?

  I won’t tell him tonight. He says he’s tired....

  “Hungry, too?” she asked, letting go a little. To have decided that she wouldn’t be having a big, fat, important conversation tonight felt like a huge reprieve.

  “I should have stopped for something.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I missed an exit near the airport where there were a whole lot of fast-food places, couldn’t be bothered to turn around and go back. Passed a few other possibilities, but decided to drive straight through.”

  “So you haven’t eaten since...?”

  “Tiny bag of crackers and some pop on the plane. Hours ago.” It was a four-hour drive from the Denver airport.

  “Bacon and eggs?”

  “You’re wonderful.”

  She went through to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, while he slumped on the couch. “Did you have a good time with your family?” she asked him.

  I’m pregnant, Mac.

  “I had a great time. And last night, with friends. Bit too great a time. Didn’t get to bed until three, and then I was up at six. My dad drove me to Spokane for my flight, and he likes to allow plenty of time. Then the flight out of Seattle was late.”

  “This is why you’re tired.”

  I’m pregnant. This is why I’m tired, and my breasts are starting to get sore.

  “It is.”

  “Any news about the job at Barrier Mountain?”

  “Nothing yet. They said it would be sometime this week.”

  “But you thought the interview went well?”

  “You never really know, do you? But, yeah, I did. That’s what I want to tell you about. The people seemed great. They have some big ideas about what they want to do on the mountain, and they wanted my ideas, too. It would be a step up. If I get it. If I take it. More ambitious than anything I’ve done before, but they could see I had the qualifications. I honestly did have a very good feeling about it. Just to have them offer it to me would feel good.”

  “That’s great. I hope you hear soon.”

  “Me, too.”

  I’m pregnant, and you might be moving back to Idaho.

  “How do you want your eggs? Scrambled? Fried?”

  “Whateve
r’s easiest. Need some help?”

  “Not if you’ve had three hours of sleep.” And if you’ve had three hours of sleep, I’m definitely not going to talk about anything important tonight. “I’ll scramble them. How many?”

  “Oh, six? Seven? Twelve?”

  She laughed. “Make a decision. But I have to warn you, I don’t have twelve.”

  “Four. And three slices of toast. And six pieces of bacon. I really have not eaten today.”

  “Four eggs I have. And I can fry some tomato, too, if you want it.”

  “Sounds great.” He closed his eyes, and she had to stand in the kitchen doorway and watch him for a moment before she got to work. He looked so good, his body hard with muscle inside its black T-shirt, even when he was flopped on her couch like a rag doll, the planes of his face smooth and motionless, with his dark lashes thick against his tanned skin.

  In one of their sleepy bedtime conversations, she’d asked him where he got the dark eyes and olive skin, and he’d told her about his Spanish Basque grandmother, and his Italian great-grandfather who’d somehow ended up in Idaho in the early nineteen hundreds, working for the railroad in Pocatello. “Both of them on my mother’s side.”

  “Which explains why you’re called Wheeler, not something cool and exotically European.”

  “Sadly, there is nothing cool and exotic about me,” he’d said.

  But he was wrong. Looking at him now, she felt that same kick she’d felt the night they’d met. He did something to her, and they’d known each other only a couple of months, and she hadn’t been looking for anything serious, and she didn’t think he was, either, but he did something to her, and she didn’t know what that meant.

  “So you would definitely take the job?” she asked abruptly, and he opened his sleepy eyes and looked at her, his face soft with fatigue. There were little creases on his eyelids, above those gypsy-black eyes, and for a few seconds she couldn’t breathe.

  “Cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Because I haven’t decided. Really tempted. But I haven’t been in Aspen long.”

  “So it should be easy to leave.”

  Will it be easy for me to leave? I’ve been here for years.

  “Or it makes me feel too much like a nomad to be leaving again already.”

  “Not if you’re leaving to go home.”

  “True.” He yawned. “But if something in mountain management came up here...” He looked at her, with a sudden alertness that belied the yawn. “What do you think about it?”

  “I think I’d better make those eggs before you fall asleep completely.”

  “Fair point.”

  She had the meal ready for him in five minutes, and he ate it about that fast, too. He was in bed by nine, and she slid in beside him shortly afterward, and they snuggled against each other like furry animals keeping warm in a burrow, but he was asleep before they could even think about making love.

  That was okay.

  That was good, really, because if he’d been awake enough for lovemaking, he would have been awake enough for a talk, and she felt sick about the talk. She wasn’t ready for it yet.

  She held on to him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, feeling the wall of his body against her, feeling the squirmy sensation in her heart.

  * * *

  The next day at lunch, he told her, “I’m taking a pass tonight, if that’s okay.”

  “Taking a pass?”

  “On seeing you. I’m actually going home to my place and doing nothing but watch TV. I partied too hard in Idaho.”

  The statement bothered her on two levels. First, that he took it for granted she’d want to see him, and therefore needed to apologize as if he was letting her down. Second, the party thing. He was new in town, he might not be staying long and apparently he had a taste for the party-hard bachelor social life that he hadn’t revealed before.

  “So you have a split personality,” she teased, hiding what she felt. “You’re not a party animal here.”

  He shrugged and gave a rueful smile. “Just some friends I hadn’t seen for a while. They led me astray.”

  “The truth about last night and all the bacon and eggs. You were still hungover.”

  “Well...maybe a bit. Candle burned at both ends, more like. Mind buzzing about the job at Barrier Mountain. The bacon and eggs were excellent, thank you. I may not have stressed that enough.”

  She’d apparently telegraphed that he did need to apologize, and this was what he’d fixed on.

  I’ve made the right decision. I might be ready to be pregnant...just...but we’re definitely not ready to do this together, to join our whole lives. We’d be doing it for all the wrong reasons.

  And he’d given her another day’s reprieve in the daunting task of talking about it. The relief and frustration she felt about this were yet more scary emotions in what was rapidly becoming a whole head and heart and gut full of them.

  When some of her friends hauled her off to their table to share a pizza, while Everard and a couple of other guys in the line waiting to order a meal started talking to Mac about basketball, she let the separation happen without more than a quick finger-wave goodbye, but maybe that was wrong. Maybe it was cowardice.

  She should have pushed for some private time.

  * * *

  Mac loved the way Lee wrinkled her nose like that, when she wasn’t totally happy. Her finger-wave and her twinkling eyes and her body movement all said, “They want me to share their pizza, what can I say?” and only that little crimp in her nose told a different story.

  Would rather be with you.

  Same back at you, Lee, except I know I’ll be a bear with a sore head tonight. And right now I really, really don’t feel like talking about basketball. Did that for about four hours on Saturday.

  “Northwestern is going down, I’m telling you,” someone said.

  “Michigan.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  The words faded to a vague babble as he ate his burger.

  Maybe they should see each other tonight, after all? Lee could come down to his place. She’d done that only a few times, because, really, why would you make that drive down valley when you had a mansion right on the mountain? Tonight, though... They could grab some takeout to eat while he threw his laundry into the machine, and she could go home early, and he’d get to see her but still feel as if he’d caught up a little on overdue chores and sleep.

  He let the basketball talk wash over him, and didn’t make any kind of decision about tonight, and next time he looked at her table, she’d already gone. He taught two challenging beginner group classes in the afternoon, full of guys who thought they were naturals and women who had no self-belief at all, and if the two sexes could just have met in the middle with their confidence levels, he wouldn’t have had nearly as many spills and crashes to deal with.

  He drove down the mountain at the end of the day, and his apartment seemed...well, a little pointless, really. Cramped bachelor pad with no charm, and the art photography he’d put on the walls wasn’t enough. Thinking that Lee might be here—if he called her—he changed the sheets, did laundry and passed the vacuum cleaner, by which time it was after six.

  Should he call her?

  He pulled out his phone and came so close, thinking of the little wrinkle in her nose that said she wasn’t quite as independent as he might have thought, thinking of talking to her more seriously about Idaho, about whether he should make the move, if he got an offer. Did they have the kind of relationship where they needed to consider each other before they made decisions or plans?

  He should talk to her.

  But not yet.

  The thought of framing the words made him feel the fatigue i
n his limbs and the partied-too-hard heaviness in his head that still hadn’t quite gone.

  Leave it, he decided. See her tomorrow, when he could do it justice.

  Chapter Six

  That night Lee called Mr. Narman and told him she was moving out, because she really needed to let him know this as soon as possible. Whatever happened when she talked to Mac, she didn’t intend to stay on here through a pregnancy and birth.

  Mr. Narman cut very quickly to what was important from his end. “Would that friend of yours be interested in replacing you?”

  “I hope so. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Sound her out. We’ve been happy when she’s subbed for you. Tell her we’d offer the same arrangement. Can I trust you to fix it up, and get back to me if there’s any problem?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She waited for him to say something about how much he’d appreciated her effort over the years, and how the family would miss her, but no. “Just send a text when it’s arranged.”

  She called Alyssa, who whooped and said yes without a second’s pause for thought. On Tuesday, Lee saw snow-sports school director Chris Logan in his office and handed in her resignation, effective at the end of the coming weekend, which she knew would be a busy one.

  “If it’s too soon, Chris, I can hold off another couple of weeks,” she offered, “but I’d rather not, as long as it doesn’t cause you problems. I’m planning to move back east and my baby sister is getting married the weekend after next. If I can finish Sunday, then I can start the drive Monday and be home in time for the wedding, instead of flying back and forth.”

  “Right.” He nodded. “You put in for leave for the wedding weeks ago, I remember.”

  “I did, but there’s been a change of plan, and it’s likely that I’m making a permanent move.”

  “Not a problem at this end?”

  “No.” She had her story ready. “My parents have retired and my sisters have taken over running the family business, a vacation resort, and it’s having a major remodel. They could do with some help, it turns out.”

  I’ll be needing family help of a different kind....