Niall gave a low, dry laugh. “You’re kidding, right? I was a mess then, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“No. I haven’t forgotten. But that’s not my question. What did you think of me?”
“I thought you were the SOB who was always trying to tell me what to do.”
“Yeah. Got that message loud and clear.”
“And I thought…”
Suddenly, his breath was stuck in his throat. “Yeah? Say it.”
Niall backpedaled. “You know, it doesn’t matter. We’re all grown-up now. We got through it and we all turned out fine.”
“Niall.”
“What?”
“I’m not calling to get on you. I just want to know what you really thought of me back during the worst times.”
“You do. Seriously?”
“I do. Yes.”
“Well, all right.” Niall paused, as though carefully considering what he was going to say. And then he came out with it. “Sometimes I thought you hated us—me, most of all. That you hated being stuck with us, and with me in particular, since I was the one who gave you the most grief. That you resented the hell out of us and you were angry at us a lot of the time, though with Cormac and Brenda you tried not to show it. You were mad at us just for being there, being your responsibility, now that Mom and Dad were gone.” Anger. Resentment. There did seem to be a pattern here. “Rogan? Are you going to hang up on me?”
“I’m still here and I’m not hanging up. And you’re right. I was angry and resentful. I never hated you, though. I…loved you.” As he stumbled over the words, he realized he hadn’t said them enough—hardly at all, when you came right down to it. So he said them again. “I love you. Present tense.”
“Well.” Niall cleared his throat. “That’s good. I love you, too.”
“Also, you turned out great. And I’m proud. So proud of you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
After a minute, Niall asked cautiously, “So you’re sure that wasn’t too much for you to take?”
“No way. As a matter of fact, it was exactly what I needed to hear.”
After Niall, Rogan called Cormac. “I want to take the rest of the week off. Think you can manage without me till next Monday?”
“Not a problem. We’re pretty much on schedule.” He ran down the projects they had in the works. “Yeah. We’re okay. It’s tax week, but I’m on top of it. I’m sending the returns off tomorrow.”
Rogan knew the tax returns were ready to go. He’d already signed them. “I can get back earlier, if you need me. Just call my cell.”
“Fair enough. Where you headed?”
“Elena and the baby are down at the Bravo ranch visiting her sister. Thought I’d fly down, surprise her.”
“Can’t get along without her, huh?”
“That’s about the size of it—and Cormac?”
“What else?”
“You’re an excellent brother, a fine business partner and a very good friend. I love you a lot.”
“Travel safe,” his brother said softly.
“Thanks. I will.”
Tuesday morning after breakfast, Elena and Mercy took the kids, a playpen and a basket of toys for Lucas and went out to sit on the front veranda.
It was a pleasant day, warm and getting warmer. But at least there was a nice breeze.
They didn’t talk a lot. It was lovely, really, Elena thought. Peaceful. Just sitting there, side-by-side in a matched pair of big, white wooden rockers, the wide Texas sky spread out in front of them, Lucas stacking blocks at their feet. The babies lay in the soft-sided blue playpen together, Serena asleep and Michael gazing dreamily up at the butterfly mobile that Mercy had attached to one of the sides, making happy little giggling sounds to himself.
Elena closed her eyes and let her head fall back. She rocked slow and steady, her thoughts straying where she wished they wouldn’t: to Rogan.
Yesterday, he’d hung up before she’d even told him what day she and Michael would be home. Like he couldn’t wait to get away from her.
Like he didn’t even care if she ever came back to him.
She did not want to grow bitter, to become as angry at him as he continued to be at her. But sometimes she wondered how long a woman could be expected to keep her heart and mind open, to nurture loving feelings for a man who seemed to wish she would simply…disappear?
Just thinking about Rogan depressed her. The problem seemed unsolvable. She wanted to make things better between them. But she didn’t know how.
So she was avoiding the problem altogether, staying away from him, hanging out here at Mercy’s when she probably should have gone home yesterday, as originally planned. After all, as long as she was here and he was there, the chance of them coming to some kind of peace with each other was pretty much nil.
It’s pretty much nil, anyway, said a bleak voice in her head. She heard that voice a lot lately.
And that really brought her down. She’d always thought of herself as a take-charge, problem-solving person. But lately, well, she was seeing that some solutions took two. She couldn’t make her marriage work without at least a little help from her husband.
She felt Mercy’s hand then, on her bare forearm. Mercy’s fingers were warm and firm, reaching across the small distance between their rocking chairs. Elena told herself to count her blessings. She had a beautiful child and the best sister in the world. And a big extended family who loved her as much as she loved them.
Things could be a whole lot worse. She needed to keep that in mind.
The purr of a powerful engine cut through the morning quiet.
Mercy squeezed her arm. “We’ve got company.”
Elena lifted her head and opened her eyes as the rented Lexus rolled to a stop at the base of the wide front steps. The windows were tinted. She couldn’t see who was behind the wheel.
Still, she had the strangest lifting, excited feeling under her breastbone. Weightless as a sunbeam, that feeling, light as a white dove with its wings spread for flight. She knew what it was: hope.
But the feeling changed to something darker, something washed in the harsh burn of rising tears, as her husband emerged from behind the wheel.
Chapter Sixteen
Elena got up from the rocker. She stood tall. She had the silliest urge to smooth her hair, to run her hands down the front of the old jeans she wore.
But she didn’t. She simply stood there, waiting.
She had no idea what to say to him. So she didn’t say a thing. And maybe that was for the best. Let him try to figure out something to say first, for a change.
He stopped at the foot of the steps, shielded his eyes with his big hand and said, “Hi.”
She gave it back to him. “Hi.”
He glanced behind her, at her sister. “Mercedes,” he said.
Elena heard the rocker creak. Her sister said, “Rogan. How are you?”
“Lonely.” He started up the steps.
And her heart was going so fast, like a jackrabbit trapped inside her chest, beating its strong, swift feet against her rib cage, frantic to get free.
And then he was up on the wide porch with her, between the two central pillars that flanked the steps. He looked good. Fit. In a tan shirt and tan trousers. But up close, she could see the dark shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes.
She wanted to throw her arms around him and never let him go. She wanted to turn and walk away and not look back.
He caught her gaze and held it. His eyes were the warm, vibrant green of the man who had been her lover last May. The man who had brought her tropical flowers and heart-shaped balloons in the middle of the night.
“Elena.” His voice was rough, torn-sounding. “Could we have a few minutes alone?”
She had the cruelest urge to do to him what he’d done to her that Sunday more than two weeks before, to look him straight in those clover-green eyes and say, Can’t you see I’m kind of busy here? I don’t have time for you now.
But the urge passed. She asked her sister, “Will you keep an eye on Michael?”
“Of course.”
Rogan glanced down into the playpen. She watched as a soft smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Michael. Hey. How’re you doing, big guy?”
The baby cooed and giggled, as if he knew his name already—as if he recognized his dad.
Maybe Rogan wanted a few minutes with his son. He hadn’t been such a great husband lately, but he was a dedicated dad.
Elena suggested, “Go ahead and hold him. We can talk later.”
He looked at her again. “No. Please. Now.”
Her face felt hot and her pulse boomed in her ears. “All right. Let’s go inside.” She turned and went in through the wide front door. He followed, closing it after him. She went on up the wide staircase, acutely aware of his firm tread behind her.
The door to the room she was using stood open. She led him through.
It was a nice, big room, with lots of light coming in the bow window that looked out over the front grounds. Michael’s portable crib stood on the far side of the bed near an antique mahogany bureau. The bed had a white cover with celery-green throw pillows.
She gestured at the two floral-patterned slipper chairs by the bow window. He went and sat down in one. She took the other.
Silence. Except for the roar of her own blood in her ears.
So strange. The two of them, sitting stiffly in the golden wash of morning light. Two married people who had no idea what to say to each other.
Rogan spoke at last. “I’ve been missing you. So bad.”
Coulda fooled me. She sat straighter, stiffer. But at least her heart rate slowed a little.
He had confessed that he’d missed her. That was something. That was…a step.
He tried again. “I treated you wrong. I know I did. I…well, while you were gone, I ran into this woman I dated last year.”
“A…woman?”
He nodded. “I was out with her the night that Caleb called to tell me you were at the hospital having Michael. I took her straight to her house, dropped her off and never called her again.”
Now her chest felt like some giant fist was squeezing it. She didn’t want to hear about him and some other woman. “Rogan. Why are you telling me about some other woman?”
He stared. “But I’m not.”
“But you just said—”
“Elena, I swear to you. This isn’t about another woman. No way. It’s about you. I met this woman I had gone out with, Pauline, in Whole Foods and she said hi and kind of looked hurt that I had never called her again. And I held up my ring finger and said I was married. She congratulated me. And that was all. She rolled her cart one way and I went the other.”
He still wasn’t making any sense to her. “And I need to know this…why?”
“Because I saw her—and all I could think of was you.”
The fist around her heart loosened a fraction. “Me?”
“Yeah.” He was looking so young, suddenly. Young and hopeful. “Elena, you’re the one. The only one for me. There’s no one else. And there won’t be. Not only because you’re my wife. But because I love you. I don’t want to be with anyone but you. I don’t want to be free. I honestly don’t.” He raised his right hand, palm out. “And I swear to you, this is only me talking. Nobody coached me. I haven’t spoken to your brother in weeks.”
Tears clogged her throat. She sniffed them away with a hard toss of her head. “But you said—”
“I know what I said.” He leaned closer. “And I see now. I get it. None of it, all the crap I laid on you, was ever even about you. It was about me. About my bitterness and my resentment when I had to take over raising my brothers and sister after our parents died.”
“But wait. I thought that raising your brothers and Brenda was your choice, you know? That it was what you wanted to do.”
“No. It was what I felt I had to do.”
“Not a choice?”
“Sure, yeah. A choice. But a choice I felt forced to make, one I really didn’t want.” He made a low sound, shook his head. “Your dad as good as called me a hero, that first day I met you, when the three of us went out to lunch together. I was no hero. I was a self-absorbed twenty-one-year-old kid who knew he would never forgive himself if he let the state have his brothers and little sister. So I took them. And I resented them and the hard, slogging job I knew I had ahead of me, raising them. I got it in my head that when Brenda finally went away to college—then, at last, I would have my time to myself…”
She said, gently now, “But the moment you were finally free, you met me.”
He chuckled, the sound weighted with irony. “And by then I was so locked into my freedom as my payback, I couldn’t see what I could have with you, that you were—and are—the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I pushed you away. And then I blamed you when you didn’t come running to me to take care of you when you found out you were having my baby. I put it all on you. I had the habit of resenting the ones I loved. I just…went right on with my habit. I transferred my anger and my resentment from my brothers and sister to you.” He rose, stood looking down at her in the pool of light from the morning sun. “Pretty messed up, huh?”
She gazed up at him, wondering how such a great guy could have gotten everything so turned around. “Yeah. Pretty messed up—but then again, well, it happens sometimes. We get confused. It all gets twisted.”
“And before we know it, we’ve lost what we want—what we love—the most.”
“You’re right. That can happen.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets, as though he didn’t quite know what to do with them—or maybe because he was a little afraid to reach for her. His eyes were so soft. “Have I…lost you?”
She gazed up at him. And the lightness was back within her, filling her up. It was more than hope now. It was love. Realized. She held his shining eyes and she told him, “No, you haven’t lost me. I’m yours. Always.” She said her father’s word for it: “Siempre.”
“Elena…” He said it so softly. Like a prayer.
She rose to stand with him in the wash of morning sun. And her tears rose, too, and she let them. They spilled over. She didn’t care. She let them slide, unashamed, down her cheeks. “I was so afraid that you were never going to look beyond your own anger, so afraid we would never have the kind of marriage I’ve always dreamed of.”
“I think we can, Elena. I know we can.” He dared to reach out then, to touch her cheek, to cradle her upturned face in both of his cherishing hands, to brush away her tears with his warm, rough thumbs. “I love you. With my whole heart, with every part of myself. There’s…nothing in the way of that anymore. I swear it to you.” He lowered his mouth then.
She lifted hers.
He claimed her lips in a kiss so tender, a kiss that spoke of their lives, unfolding, of the family they had made, the two of them, with Michael. Of the years ahead, filled with laughter and hardship, with struggle, sometimes. And so much joy.
“Will you take me back?” he asked, so gently, so hopefully, when he lifted his mouth from hers.
She smiled up at him through her tears. “Oh, Rogan. Don’t you know? I never let you go.”
ISBN: 978 1 472 08284 8
MARRIAGE, BRAVO STYLE!
© 2011 Christine Rimmer
Published in Great Britain 2011
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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Marriage, Bravo Style! Page 18
