Harlequin Special Edition November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2

by Lilian Darcy

  * * *

  They met Gina and Paul for a buffet breakfast at the hotel at eight-thirty, and spent almost as long over the meal as they’d spent at dinner the night before. Their table by the window gave glorious views down the lake, with shadings of blue mountain reflected in sparkling water. The sun was shining and the promise of spring was strong in the air. The crocuses were blooming in the hotel gardens and the grass had begun to green up again, after losing its winter covering of snow.

  Paul was the first to be ready to leave. “I need to get my hiking boots on. Gina, you’re not having more coffee, are you? What if we lose this beautiful sun?”

  She sighed good-humoredly and said, no, three cups was probably more than enough. When he left the table to go up to their room, she lingered long enough to tell Lee, “He’s not always this antsy. You’ll be wondering how I put up with him.”

  “No, Gina, I understand how he feels. I get restless if I’m indoors too long, just as he does.”

  “Then you and Mac are very well suited,” she said, then pressed her fingertips over her mouth as if she thought she’d said the wrong thing.

  Which maybe she had.

  Lee tried to find a safe response, but couldn’t. Mac was shifting on his feet. “You changing into hiking boots, too, Mom?”

  “No, these’ll be fine.” She showed her foot, clad in a white leather athletic shoe. “You said the terrain was fairly easy, Lee?”

  “Yes, it’s a vehicle track, goes up and down a little in places but is mostly flat, and covered with a carpet of pine needles in lots of places.”

  “Snakes?”

  “Still asleep, till May.”

  “Good to know.”

  It was a beautiful walk, and when Lee mentally compared it to the alternatives Paul had disdained—shopping and sitting around—she had to agree with him. As a way of getting to know Mac’s parents without pressure, this was so much easier. They were interested in the animal and plant life of the area, so she talked about that, and they told her she was as good as a professional guide. She filed it away as something to think about for later, after the baby was born, because she wasn’t sure that working at Spruce Bay would really be the right thing for her in the longer term.

  Back at Mac’s pickup, they decided they didn’t need lunch, since breakfast had been so lavish and they’d snacked on chocolate and nuts during the walk. With his energy undiminished, Paul proposed, “Let’s rent a motorboat at the hotel.” So they spent three more hours out-of-doors while Lee directed them to several beautiful spots on the lake that you couldn’t get to by road.

  It was five o’clock by the time they returned the boat. There was a change in the air, promising a spring dump of snow, and the sun had gone from the lake, leaving the wind cold and making Lee realize how tired she was.

  Mac could see it, too. He did the thing he’d been doing a lot since his parents got here: standing close to her and letting their fingers twine together down by their thighs, and it made her melt, because it was so intimate and private and tender. “Do you want to skip dinner with us? It’s been too much for you today. Mom is right, you’ve been our tour guide all day and you haven’t had a moment.”

  “I’ve really enjoyed it,” she said truthfully.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “No?”

  “Take a break. Let me drop you back at the cabin and bring you some takeout, and you can watch TV till you fall asleep. I’ll creep into bed beside you later on.”

  “You just want more sleepy sex.”

  “You saw right through me,” he drawled. “Can you agree to this, though? Please? Or I’m going to worry about you. You really look wiped, and you’ve been so great with my parents all day.”

  “I like them.” It was getting easier. They were her kind of people. It was the situation that they all struggled with, not each other.

  “But you can take a break from them tonight. What can I get you? Chinese food from that place with the deck and ramps, near the theme park?”

  “It sounds good,” she admitted, because now that she’d acknowledged how tired she was, it seemed to have seeped right into her bones. She was so exhausted that she ached all over, her teeth hurt and she wanted to cry in Mac’s arms.

  He took her back to the cabin, and she called her sisters to let them know what was happening, because she hadn’t seen them since before dinner last night.

  Daisy said, “You do sound like you need a nap. I’m getting to know that feeling. See you whenever. There’s snow in the forecast for tonight, did you know?”

  “Yes, I could feel the change starting after we’d been on the lake.”

  “Well, wrap up warm in that cabin, because it’ll probably be three or four inches deep by morning. Not supposed to last long, thank goodness.”

  Mac was back in half an hour with General Tso’s chicken and fried rice, before he disappeared back to his parents at the hotel. Lee ate carefully, including all the broccoli, wearing the robe he’d pulled from her body last night, sitting up in the bed that smelled like him, fresh and warm. She fell asleep with the TV on and didn’t even wake up when he crept in several hours later, turned it off and climbed into bed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  What woke Lee was Mac’s phone.

  The melody mingled with her dream at first and made no sense, and by the time she worked out what that sound was, he’d lunged out of bed to fumble for the phone on the bedside table and say a croaky “Hello,” once he had it to his ear.

  It was two in the morning.

  Good phone calls didn’t come at that hour.

  “Hi. Yeah, it’s me....” He listened, seated on the edge of the bed. Lee, still disoriented from sleep, had her back to him, but thought he was probably naked because he usually slept that way.

  “Because I was asleep,” he went on, “so my voice is husky. You don’t sound like you, either.” He listened again. “Where are you?” There was a pause. “Do you know what time it is here?” Another pause. “No, because I’m not in that time zone, where, even so, it would be midnight.”

  It went on, and Lee heard almost every word he said, even though he stood up after a few minutes and went into the bathroom and closed the thin door. “I know,” he said on the far side of it. “Do you really think I haven’t been thinking about it? What do you want me to tell you, Sloane? Haven’t we both said everything that can possibly be said? Haven’t we both punished ourselves and each other enough?”

  To be honest, Lee could have stopped listening at that point. She could have put her head under a pillow and tried to think about something else.

  “No, I don’t want to,” he was saying. “No, I don’t think it would help. Yes, I can tell you’ve been drinking. That’s okay, if that’s what you want, if it gets you through. No, don’t apologize for calling. I’m sorry I said that thing about the time difference—you couldn’t have known. I just think these calls and emails on this date every year... Yes, almost every year. I think you missed the fourth.... It’s not like I go out of my way to make a note of it, but yeah, I notice.... No, I’m not telling you to move on. I’m just—”

  This date every year.

  That was when Lee finally stopped listening, and only because the thoughts in her head were speaking louder.

  This date.

  It was Sloane on the other end of the phone, and she was calling because this was the anniversary of the day their baby had died, and yet Mac hadn’t told Lee. It was the reason for the extra undercurrent of complicated feeling she’d detected in his parents this weekend and hadn’t understood.

  No, more than that. It was the reason his folks had come here in the first place. The funeral of an old man they didn’t know very well had given them the excuse they needed to check up on their son’s well-being and to examine the futur
e mother of the child waiting to be born, so they could make sure she’d keep the coming baby safe, the way Sloane hadn’t.

  And Mac hadn’t told her.

  Lee knew why he hadn’t. Exactly why.

  He was protecting her. He understood the powerful extra layer of tension it would have created if she’d known, and he was protecting her from it. She loved him for it, and it scared her and made her angry at the same time. Plus her head was in such a whirl with all those strong and tangled emotions that it made her dizzy and sick.

  It was two o’clock in the morning.

  Twelve minutes past, actually, because Mac and Sloane had been talking for a while.

  Lee fought a wave of claustrophobia so powerful that she had to push her face into the pillow to stop herself from moaning out loud. She didn’t want to stay here.

  In the bed.

  In the room.

  It didn’t feel like a cocoon the way it had earlier, eating here all tucked up in bed, knowing that Mac would soon be back. It felt like a prison. She wanted to be out and away, where she could breathe and think and find a direction for her emotional compass.

  Right now, it was pointing six different ways at once. She swiveled into a sitting position, feet on the floor, shoulders bent to cradle her churning stomach, the robe she’d fallen asleep in twisted and not very comfortable, and just ached for Mac, facing such a painful anniversary.

  Lee understood why Sloane had needed to call, but it was confronting, too. Mac had a shared and fractured bond with someone, a connection that had faded but would never fully go away. The anger and recrimination tied them together as much as it forced them apart, and one strand of what Lee felt right now was actually jealousy.

  But there was more.

  Their own baby, hers and Mac’s, this precious little being inside her, was already being molded and changed by the death of its half brother seven years ago. Mac would be a different father because of it. Gina and Paul would be different grandparents, with different expectations and fears.

  Lee herself would be a different mother, and in Mac’s pained voice, still sounding through the bathroom door, she could hear the way tiny Kelly’s death changed their relationship. Mac was trying to keep his voice low, but he couldn’t manage it, and she heard his tone rising again. “All I ever asked was that you acknowledge...” It dropped once more, and she couldn’t hear the words.

  He was protecting her by not telling her, and she hated it. Loved him. Hated what he’d done.

  Wait. Loved him?

  She did. It was starkly and painfully clear to her in this moment. She’d never dared say it to herself before, because she’d once said it about Tucker Reid, and she’d been horribly wrong.

  This was different. The things she felt for Mac she’d never felt for anyone. The sense of joy and peace when she was in his company; the things she understood about him without even trying. The way a silly conversation going back and forth between them could make her whole day, the way sleeping with him could make her whole night.

  She loved him, and right now she was angry with him, and aching for him, and scared of the power her feelings gave him, when sometimes what he wanted to do with that power was to protect her more than she needed it. He was so focused on the baby... Did he even know how he felt about the baby’s mom?

  He’d kept this secret about little Kelly from her, and maybe that wouldn’t have mattered so much if his parents hadn’t chosen to visit, and if Sloane hadn’t called.

  Protecting Lee was a way of shutting her out. Protecting her was an act of kindness, but it wasn’t an act of respect. And if Mac couldn’t respect her for who she was—a strong woman, a woman who listened and understood... If he didn’t love her for herself, for each other and what they had together as a couple—then this wasn’t going to work.

  She needed to get out of here. Two in the morning, dressed in a fluffy robe, and all she wanted was to leave so that she could get her balance back.

  But she couldn’t, because that would push all Mac’s buttons, and she loved him too much to do that.

  She went to the window and saw that the spring snowstorm Daisy had warned her about was here, with the mix of cold air from the north and moist air from the south making the flakes fall thick and heavy and fast. Lee couldn’t possibly do what she wanted, which was to climb into her clothes, grab her keys, get in the car and just drive. It would scare Mac too much.

  So she folded the robe more closely around her and went back to bed instead, while the murmuring in the bathroom rose and fell and then finally ended. He didn’t come out for a long time. She lay there waiting, listening to the silence in the bathroom, listening for the opening of the door, but nothing happened for minutes on end.

  Then, finally, came the sounds and movements she expected. The cautious click of the door opening, the nearly silent pad of his footsteps across the carpet, the careful placing of his phone back on the bedside table, the swish of the covers as he eased himself in beside her.

  He thought she was still asleep, so she pretended to be. Lied to him with her breathing and her stillness, and had him fooled. He didn’t fool her. She could hear that he was lying there wide-awake, the breath straining in his tight throat as he lay on his back. She thought he was probably cold because he’d been in that bathroom so long, with nothing but the towel he might have wrapped around his hips. She knew he would be staring through the dark at the ceiling, and she knew what he would be thinking about.

  Sloane, the phone call, the baby, the loss. The future... Protecting Lee because she was carrying his child.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours and probably was—she had her back to the clock—she couldn’t stand the double pretense any longer. She rolled over and held him, discovering that he was warm by this time.

  “Sorry. I woke you up,” he said.

  “Ages ago.”

  There was a beat of silence as he realized what she was saying. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “No, just pretending to be. When you got back into bed, I kept trying to sleep, but I couldn’t, and I could tell you couldn’t, either.”

  “So you heard, then? It was the phone that woke you?”

  The answer to that was obvious, so she didn’t bother to say it. “Why didn’t you tell me about the anniversary?”

  She felt the rise and fall of his chest as he sighed. “Because I— Because with my parents here, it seemed—”

  “Don’t answer. You don’t have to explain. I know why. You were protecting me.”

  He could tell that wasn’t a good thing. “Why is that wrong? Why is it wrong that I’m trying to take care of you and this baby, and making that my top priority?”

  “Because that’s not what I want from you.”

  “What...the hell...do you want from me, then?” He said it incredibly gently.

  “Nothing. Just this. What we have.”

  But he didn’t understand. “What we have isn’t enough for me, Lee.” He rolled to face her in the dark. “I love you. I want to marry you. We’re having a baby together, and we—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Yes. I knew it tonight. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “You said it wasn’t, just last week. You made this big argument about it, even when I’d never said it.”

  “Yeah, and I was wrong. It makes sense of everything, if we get married. When Sloane and I ended that call, I just knew I couldn’t...I can’t keep going the way we are, you and me. Day to day. These vague promises about the future. That we’ll do the right thing for the baby. That we won’t let anything turn ugly. That we’re both on the same team.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “No. We’re not. We’re separate like this. Transient. We can’t ever talk about the future properly because we’re so scared of making the wrong assum
ptions. We’re holding back. We’re being such cowards. We have to commit to this, 100 percent.”

  “Would you be saying this if your parents weren’t here, and if Sloane hadn’t called, and if this wasn’t the day the baby died?”

  “Maybe not. Not tonight. Probably not. But isn’t that the way people come to these realizations? Suddenly? Bolt from the blue? When life hits you in the face and suddenly you know what you want, without question. I want you to marry me.” He squeezed her too tightly, his skin hot against her body, and she felt the force in him. He wanted this so much, and it was wrong.

  “No. Mac, the answer is no. I love you, but no.” It hurt to say it. It was a horrible word, no, when you loved someone and wanted to make him happy, but she had to say it all the same.

  “You love me and I love you, and it’s still no?” He sounded anguished and frustrated and disbelieving.

  “It’s not right. We’ve talked about this. You said it yourself. It’s all about the baby.”

  “Not just about the baby. I love you. I said that. And anyhow, the baby is important.”

  “The baby is incredibly important, and that’s why I won’t do it. I won’t take the risk that we’re doing it only because it’s neat and your parents want it and you don’t want me to be like Sloane. I love you, Mac, and I won’t marry you.”

  He didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time. “I know you well enough not to try to argue you out of this,” he finally murmured.

  “Thank you. Because I meant it.”

  He was silent again, and she could almost feel the desperation in his thinking. “But I can’t go on with things the way they are.” He sounded broken about it, lost, his voice cracking. “You’re in my bed, right now. We made love a few hours ago and it was fabulous, the way it always is. And it makes no sense.” He rolled out from under the covers and reached for the pile of clothing he’d left on a chair.

  “What are you doing?” She was lost, too.

  “Going.” He pulled on underwear and jeans.

  “Where?” And broken.