The Long Way Back

by JoAnn Ross

  Her words reverberated around the kitchen like an unwelcome echo. Caine was looming over her, forcing her to tilt her head back to see his eyes. He was angry—more than angry. He was as furious as Nora had ever seen him.

  Caine felt a fresh surge of fury and welcomed it. He’d been going through the motions since realizing he was going to be put on waivers. How long had it been since he’d allowed himself to experience pure, unadulterated emotion? Too long.

  A muscle jerked in his jaw. They glared at one another, each daring the other to make the next move.

  “You know, your aim has gotten a helluva lot more accurate,” Caine said finally. “Because you definitely scored a direct hit with that one, Nora.”

  They’d had too many of these fights in the past. And although they’d eventually made up in bed, each argument, every cruel word, had succeeded in straining the already tenuous bonds of their marriage. Until finally, those ties had snapped.

  “I didn’t want to score any hit,” she murmured, looking down at the floor. “I thought that’s what this dinner was all about. To put the past behind us, not relive it, word by hurtful word.”

  His hands were far from steady as he brushed Nora’s bangs off her forehead. Caine wanted to try to make her understand the desperation that had led to his recent, admittedly less-than-ideal lifestyle. But how could he make her understand? When he still didn’t understand himself?

  “Hell. I’m sorry. Things have been a little rough lately. What with Maggie. And this damn arm and getting put on waivers. But I had no right to take my problems out on you.”

  “You just need to give it a bit more time,” she advised. “Try a little patience.”

  “You know patience has never been my long suit.”

  “Would it be the end of the world,” she asked quietly, “if you had to quit playing ball?”

  “That’s a moot point. Since I’m not finished.”

  A nagging doubt had been nibbling at the edges of his mind. Thus far, Caine had successfully ignored it. “If Nolan Ryan can pitch a no-hitter at forty-four, I’m damned if I’m going to admit to being washed up at thirty-five.”

  “You’ll be thirty-six next month.”

  “Okay, thirty-six. So who’s counting?”

  Everyone. And they both knew it.

  Caine had been a ballplayer for as long as he could remember, and the one thing he refused to admit to Nora was that he didn’t know how to separate the man from the athlete, even if he wanted to. Which he damn well didn’t.

  “Look, Nora,” he said, trying to explain once again the one thing he’d never been able to make her understand, “I’ve spent my entire adult life, standing on a mound in front of a stadium of thousands and a television audience in the millions, expecting them to take me seriously for throwing a little piece of white cowhide at a stick.

  “I know that to you, with your education and lofty profession, that seems like a ridiculous way to earn a living.

  “But I throw that ball nearly a hundred miles an hour and I make a helluva lot of money for embarrassing some of the league’s best hitters. I’m Caine the Giant Killer, and I love it. I love the competition. And I love to win.”

  “But your injury—”

  He cut her off with an impatient wave of his hand. “Injuries are part of the game. And dammit, I refuse to allow a bit of bad luck to sidetrack me from a lifelong quest.”

  “I remember you were always questing after glory,” she murmured. At the same time, she’d been in her first year of medical school and struggling with morning sickness.

  “It’s more than glory. I feel I have something left to achieve.”

  “So you’re going to hang in there and keep swinging at the curveballs.”

  That earned a smile. “And if you swing at enough of them,” he agreed, “eventually you’ll hit a few out of the park. I hadn’t realized you’d been listening in those days.”

  Just as she hadn’t realized he’d been listening to her go on and on about medical school. Nora wondered if perhaps she’d misjudged him back then. Perhaps, she considered now, they’d misjudged one another.

  “But I didn’t ask you here to talk about baseball—” Caine’s low voice broke into her thoughts “—or my injury.” He slid his hand beneath her hair to cup her neck and hold her to his darkening gaze, making her nerve endings sizzle.

  “How about a temporary truce?” he asked quietly.

  The brief hot argument had left her drained. Nora wanted to lean her head against his broad shoulder; she wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and feel his strong arms around her, reassuring her that they could put this fight behind them, as they had so many others.

  In the end, she released a slow, ragged breath and nodded. “Truce,” she whispered.

  She reached up and traced the planes of his face with her fingertips. Frowning at the yellowish bruise around his eye, she said, “Your eye still looks horrendous.”

  “It’ll heal. They always do.”

  She shook her head in mute frustration. “You really haven’t changed.” Her faint smile took the sting out of her words.

  Her stroking touch was beginning to drive him crazy. Unable to keep from touching her, Caine ran his palms up and down her arms. “Ah, we’re back to my Peter Pan complex.”

  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  He shrugged. “I shouldn’t have called you a shrew.” Lightly he traced her ear and played with her pearl earring.

  “Don’t forget the ‘flat-chested, acid-tongued nag.’”

  Caine had the good grace to flush at that one. “Definitely uncalled-for.” His finger trailed down her throat. “Your chest is just right.”

  The finger crossed her collarbone. “In fact, I remember thinking, that first time here in the cabin, how perfectly your breasts fit my palms and wondering if everything between us would be such a close and perfect fit.”

  With deliberate leisure, the treacherous finger glided over her breast. “And it was.” Just as she felt herself slipping under his seductive spell, the beeper in her coat pocket buzzed; its screen displayed the emergency-code number. Saved by the bell. Again.

  She called the hospital from the kitchen phone, then turned back to Caine. He was leaning against the counter, his long legs crossed at the ankles, watching her with unwavering intensity.

  “I have to go.”

  He wasn’t surprised; her relief at the untimely interruption had been palpable. With uncommon self-control, Caine managed not to complain as he followed Nora out to her car.

  “How about coming back after you’re finished with your emergency?” Behind her, the rays of the sunset spread out over the Olympic Mountains like an enormous scarlet fan.

  “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have no idea how long I’ll be.” Her hand remained firmly on the car door handle, as if to anchor herself against the storm of emotions swirling inside her.

  “I don’t mind waiting.” Uncurling her fingers from the door handle, he took her hand in his.

  “I wouldn’t want you to have to do that. Especially when it could take all night.” She forced a smile. “But there will be other chances to talk before you leave town.”

  “You know I want to do more than talk, Nora.”

  “Yes.” Her eyes were painfully grave. “And to tell you the truth, back in there—” she tossed her head in the direction of the cabin “—I was tempted. But I think what’s happening here doesn’t really have anything to do with us, Caine.

  “I think deep inside you there’s a voice saying that if you could only turn the clock back to when you were younger, to those days when you and I were married and you first got called up to the majors, perhaps you could start pitching the way you once did again, too.”

  He lifted a challenging brow. “Now you’re a shrink?”

  “No. But it doesn’t take a psychology degree to see that you’re dealing with a lot of difficult
issues, Caine. As your doctor, and your friend, I’d suggest you try to take things more slowly.”

  With that, she pulled her hand free, climbed into the driver’s seat, closed the door, fastened her seat belt and drove away from the cabin.

  Caine stood at the end of the driveway, hands shoved into his pockets, and watched Nora leave. Timing, he considered grimly, as he trudged back up to the cabin, was everything.

  He went back into the cabin, swore as he glanced at the bags of groceries, then picked up a bottle of bourbon and walked down to the dock.

  The night grew cool. A gentle mist that wasn’t quite rain began to fall. Caine sat alone, on the end of his dock, drinking his way through the Jack Daniel’s.

  He’d told himself that he’d come down here to think, but that was a lie. He’d come down here to get roaring drunk.

  The problem was, Caine realized, holding the bottle up toward the crescent moon to determine the level of the remaining bourbon, it wasn’t working.

  Oh, he knew that if he suddenly stood his legs wouldn’t be all that steady, that the dock would appear to be swaying. But while the alcohol was undoubtedly having its effect on his body, his mind was, unfortunately, distressingly clear.

  He tipped the bottle to his lips. Flames slid down his throat and spread thickly, soothingly, in his stomach as he thought back to the afternoon when he’d finally made love to Nora for the second time.

  They’d been married for six months that week, but neither had thought to celebrate the anniversary. After all, theirs had not been a conventional marriage. It had been a practical arrangement, a contract entered into by both parties for their mutual benefit. Nothing more.

  At least that was what he’d been telling himself. Until that fateful day when his life had inexorably changed. He’d been eating a pizza and drinking beer while watching television when Nora burst into the apartment, her eyes red from crying. She ran past him into the bedroom as if he were invisible, slamming the door behind her. A moment later, Caine heard the sound of water running in the bathroom, the buzz of her electric toothbrush, then the unmistakable sound of weeping.

  He lowered the beer can to the coffee table and sat there, debating what to do next. Part of him opted for ignoring the incident.

  But another, stronger part of him couldn’t overlook the fact that something was definitely wrong. When he thought that it might have something to do with the baby, his blood chilled.

  He’d pointed the remote control at the screen; the screen went black. Realizing that his breath undoubtedly reeked of beer and pepperoni, and remembering how she’d looked a little queasy this morning, Caine dug a lint-covered peppermint out of his jeans pocket and popped it into his mouth.

  Then he crossed the living room and opened the bedroom door.

  “Nora?” The room was dark but he could see her, curled up in a fetal position on the bed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Go away.” She was hugging a pillow against her; her words were muffled by the foam.

  “Not until I find out if anything’s wrong with the baby.”

  “The baby’s fine.”

  But she wasn’t. And that disturbed the hell out of him. Caine crossed the room. The mattress sank under his weight as he sat down beside her. “You want to tell me what happened?”

  “No.”

  He could feel her trembling. “Come on, Nora.” Feeling awkward, he smoothed her hair with his palm. “Whatever it is, it can’t be all that bad.”

  To his surprise, Nora Anderson O’Halloran, the same woman who’d taken extra pains to avoid so much as accidentally brushing against him in their cramped apartment, had suddenly sat up, flung her arms around his neck and pressed her wet face into his shirt.

  “Oh, Caine!” She lifted her doe brown eyes that were dark and heartbreakingly bleak. “I’m never going to be a doctor!”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Not after what I did in gross anatomy class today.”

  “What did you do? Make a slip with the scalpel and emasculate Irving?”

  Irving was the cadaver her anatomy study group had been laboring over.

  When he’d first heard about the class, Caine had thought the term “gross anatomy” a perfect description. Eventually, he’d become accustomed to the fact that his wife spent her mornings with a dead body the same way he’d grown used to the faint odor of formaldehyde lingering in her blond hair.

  “It’s n-n-not funny,” she insisted on a tortured breath.

  “I’m sorry.” Caine tried to understand. “What happened?”

  “My morning sickness came back today.”

  “I thought you looked a little under the weather at breakfast,” Caine remembered. “But didn’t Dr. Palmer tell you that might happen if you got too tired?”

  “Yes. But, oh, y-y-you don’t understand.” Her shoulders slumped defeatedly.

  “I’m trying.” Caine lifted her chin on a finger and looked into her red-rimmed eyes. “But you’re not exactly a font of information, Nora.”

  “It’s s-s-so embarrassing.” She dashed at the moisture stinging her eyes and shook her head in a violent gesture.

  Comprehension dawned. “You threw up in class.”

  Nora gave him a weary look. “All over Irving’s inferior v-v-vena c-cava.”

  Caine had absolutely no idea what an inferior vena cava was and decided that it probably didn’t really matter. Not to Irving anymore, anyway.

  “Is that all?” Caine gave Nora an encouraging smile. “I seem to recall you telling me about three students who tossed their cookies the first week of class.”

  “That was the first week,” Nora explained soberly. “By now we’re all supposed to be used to it.”

  Personally, Caine thought he could probably spend the rest of his life with Irving and not get used to the idea of cutting into human organs—dead or alive—but he knew that was not the point of this conversation.

  If he were to be perfectly fair, he’d have to acknowledge that Nora probably couldn’t imagine the pure pleasure of watching a batter hit a pop fly off your curveball, either. “You’re pregnant. I’m sure your professor will take that into consideration.”

  “Dr. Eugene Fairfield is an antiquated old fossil who doesn’t believe women belong in medicine, period,” she muttered. “As for pregnant women…” She sighed. “And it gets worse. After I got sick, I fainted.”

  “Fainted?” Fear raced through him as his hand dropped to her belly, rounded with his child. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes. I was only out for a second, and the only person who got hurt was Irving.”

  “How the hell could Irving get hurt?”

  “I pulled the table over when I fell and the next thing I knew, Irving was sprawled on the floor, with his gall bladder and his liver lying beside him.”

  Nora drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “I know Dr. Fairfield’s going to flunk me and I’ll get kicked out of medical school and I’ll never be a doctor!”

  Moisture flooded her eyes again and she clung to him, sobbing harshly into his shoulder.

  If he hadn’t been so genuinely distressed, Caine would have laughed at the idea of quiet, studious Nora, of all people, causing such havoc in class.

  But she was more distraught than he’d ever seen her. And, staggered by her misery, Caine rocked her in his arms and murmured inarticulate words of comfort into her ear.

  His hands moved up and down her back, the gesture meant to comfort, rather than arouse. His lips pressed against her hair and caught the soft scent of flowers beneath the aroma of formaldeyhde she’d brought with her from the lab.

  After an immeasurable time, Caine could tell by Nora’s slow steady breathing that her pain had run its course.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Yes.” Her soft eyes mirrored her surprise as she tilted her head back and looked up at him. “I am. Thank you.”

  Her quiet formality along with the lingering pain in her eyes had tugged at something ele
mental deep inside him. Looking down into her pale and unusually open face, Caine was engulfed with a tenderness like nothing he’d ever known.

  And with that tenderness, he realized, came love.

  “You don’t have to thank me, Nora.” His gaze moved over her pale, uplifted face. “I’m your husband. And although I’ll admit to being a little vague about husbandly duties, I think a shoulder to cry on comes with the job.”

  “But we agreed—”

  “I don’t give a damn what we agreed.” She’d pointed out the terms of their agreement innumerable times over the past six months and Caine was sick of hearing it. “Would it be against the rules if I kissed you?”

  Surprise warred with unwilling desire on her lovely features. “I think it would.”

  “Too bad.” Bending his head, he kissed her face where salty tears were still drying.

  “Caine—”

  “What, Nora?” His lips skimmed along the slanted line of her cheekbone.

  “I don’t think this is a very good idea.”

  “You might be right.” His teeth closed around the tender skin of her earlobe and Nora drew in a quick breath but did not pull away. “But I can’t come up with a logical reason why I shouldn’t make love to my wife.”

  With a sensitivity neither had been aware of him possessing, his hand moved slowly, possessively, from her shoulder to her belly. “How about you?”

  “No.” Nora’s soft breathless voice was a whisper of surrender. “I can’t.” With a sigh, she closed her eyes, relaxed and let him guide her into the mists.

  His hands slipped under her maternity top, unhooked the front clasp of her bra with ease and cupped her breasts. When his thumb brushed against her nipple, Nora gasped and would have pulled away. But before she could move, Caine’s lips fused to hers.

  Caine felt the last vestiges of her resistance ebb. He felt it in the softening of her lips and the strength of her fingers as she clutched his upper arms. Heat simmered at the base of his spine, making him ache.

  He pulled off her oversize blouse and tossed it onto the floor. Her nipples, which he remembered as being a rosy pink, had darkened to the hue of the cranberries that grew wild in bogs along the coast. And they were just as hard, Caine discovered as he brushed his hand over one dusky bud. The intimate touch made Nora stiffen in his arms. “Don’t worry,” he soothed. “I promise not to take you anywhere you don’t want to go, Nora.”