She didn’t want to think about that. She wouldn’t think about it, she decided. She wouldn’t let it damage the pleasure of waking up in Adam’s arms, of feeling his big body curved around her, of having the warmth of his breath in her hair.
She closed her eyes and just reveled in that moment, in all the sensations, in the cocoon he formed around her.
Everything would be all right, she told herself. Better than all right. Everything from here on would be great.
Hadn’t he said himself that he’d thought about this marriage evolving into the real thing? About growing old together?
Stranger things had happened than two people coming together under less than ideal circumstances and still making it work.
They were married, after all. Their lives had been joined even before their bodies, long ago, when they were teenagers, and it took until now for them to find their way to each other.
Now that they had, maybe this could be the beginning for them. The real beginning. Maybe now they could get to know the people they’d grown up to be. They could make plans. They might even have kids eventually. Kids who would have kids and they could tell them about the inauspicious wedding that had formed the roots for a whole family.
Everything would be all right, she repeated in her mind as if it were a magic spell. Everything would be better than all right. Everything from here on would be great.
She took a deep breath and sighed it out, picturing the home they would build, the babies they would have together, the nights they would spend like the last one.
She opened her eyes, thinking that maybe she’d wake Adam and greet the morning the way they’d passed the night.
But for no particular reason, when her eyes were open again, her glance happened onto something she hadn’t noticed before.
The dormer window rose from the attic floor so she had a certain amount of view of the roof. And in that view she spotted the hammer she’d used when she and Adam had repaired the shingles on Friday. Apparently she’d forgotten it.
It was no big deal, but that niggling negative part of her taunted her with the possibility—however remote—that if Adam realized her oversight he might turn once again into that sarcastic, condescending, snide bear he’d been so much of this past week.
Sure he’d said he’d put that bear into hibernation and she hadn’t seen any signs of it since. But she just didn’t want to take any chances. She didn’t want anything to mar what was between them now.
Suddenly, retrieving that hammer and putting it away before Adam knew it was out there seemed like a good idea.
Then, once she had, she could crawl back into this warm bed and wake Adam up.
She was near the edge of the mattress so she just rolled forward, carefully easing herself out from under Adam’s arm.
He was sleeping soundly—she could hear it in his deep breathing—and although his arm ended up without a prop and his hand dangled off the side of the bed, he didn’t stir.
His shirt was on the floor not far away and Victoria snatched it up, slipping into it and closing the snaps down the front. Quietly she pulled on sweatpants and tennis shoes, careful not to wake him.
She wanted that pleasure all to herself after she’d put the hammer away.
She wanted it even more when the scent of his after-shave wafted up from the fabric of his shirt and the feel of it against her naked skin reminded her of having his big body all around her.
She tiptoed to the window, thinking briefly about going out onto the roof that way. But not only would opening it make a certain amount of noise, she could tell just how cold it was outside from the frost on the corners of the glass and the thin sheet of white that covered the roof, and she didn’t want a blast of frigid air waking him if the noise didn’t.
Instead she tiptoed quietly out of the attic bedroom, down the stairs and out the cabin’s back door.
Adam had brought the ladder from the barn on Friday but Victoria had seen where he’d put it when they were finished so she went directly there to get it.
It wasn’t hard to manage as she toted it around to the front of the cabin and propped it against the edge of the porch overhang.
All she was thinking the whole time was that it was only a matter of minutes before she’d accomplished her goal and Adam would never be the wiser about her forgetfulness.
Then she’d retrace her steps—well, maybe she’d stop in the bathroom to brush her teeth first—and before he even knew she’d been gone she’d slip back under the covers with him. She’d snuggle her naked body to the warm splendor of his. She’d wake him with slow, sexy kisses. She’d let her hands do the things she now knew would turn him on.
With the ladder in place, Victoria climbed it in a hurry. A big hurry since just thinking about her plans to turn on Adam had turned her on, too.
She moved in such a hurry that she didn’t stop to consider that the frost on the roof might make it slippery. Too slippery to be up there.
No sooner had her feet hit the shingles than they went out from under her.
She lost her balance, sliding uncontrollably toward the edge, struggling for anything to grab on to. But there wasn’t anything except the ladder. When she caught hold of it, she only increased her downward momentum, pushing it away from the roof as she went completely over the edge and plummeted to the earth below.
Adam wasn’t sure what woke him.
A thud was what it seemed like. From outside.
He didn’t give it much thought. He just rolled over and reached for Victoria.
But she wasn’t there and that was what got him to open his eyes.
Bright sunshine flooded the room and hurt his eyes, but he worked through it, looking around the room for signs of her.
He had better plans for waking up this morning than to have to search for her. Unless, of course, she was in the shower and he could join her there.
With that in mind, he sat up in bed and swung his feet to the floor. The jeans he’d had on the night before were within reach and he yanked them on, standing to zip the zipper but not bothering with the button that fastened the waistband. He was hoping he’d have the opportunity to shed them again before too long.
He couldn’t hear any sounds of water running as he descended the steps, though, and he didn’t find Victoria in the living room or the kitchen when he got downstairs. The bathroom door was open, letting him know she definitely wasn’t in there.
“Anybody home?” he called jokingly as he headed for the mudroom. But it, too, was empty and there was no answer to his question.
Maybe she was in his bedroom and hadn’t heard him, he thought, picturing her propped on pillows in his bed, naked, waiting to surprise him with a change of venue for a little variety.
When he didn’t find her in the bedroom, either, not only did his hopes of a morning of lovemaking fade away, he started to worry, to have doubts.
What if she’d taken off?
What if things between them the night before hadn’t been as good as he’d thought they were and she’d gotten up this morning, snatched the keys to the truck and left?
With that thought Adam made a beeline for the front door, flinging it open to see if the truck was still parked out front. It was. But that wasn’t what caught his attention.
Because there was Victoria, lying on the ground like a crumpled rag doll.
Calling her name, he charged from the cabin, ignoring the icy cold on his bare feet as he hurdled the porch and landed on the frozen ground.
She didn’t budge. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t acknowledge him at all.
For a split second as he knelt beside her, he thought she was sleeping. That was how she looked, lying partly on her side, partly on her back, her arms and legs flung here and there.
Maybe she was a sleepwalker, he told himself. Maybe she’d walked out there in her sleep, laid down and gone right on sleeping.
But even as he had the thought, he knew it wasn’t realistic.
Her skin was almost as white as the frost all around her and she was still. Too still.
“Victoria! Tori!” he shouted, hearing the panic in his own voice as it flashed through his mind that she was dead.
Nothing.
“Oh, God…”
And then he saw the faintest breath form a tiny cloud on the cold air near her nose and he knew she was alive.
Alive but hurt.
But as long as she was alive, there was hope, and that hope cleared his head.
He tried to assess the damage, gently checking her arms and legs for broken bones. As he did he also noticed the ladder lying on the ground nearby and he suddenly knew what she’d been doing out there.
“That damn hammer,” he muttered to himself, recalling that he’d seen it on the rooftop when they’d left the morning before for Whitehorn.
Why the hell had she gotten out of bed at dawn to climb onto the roof for a damn hammer?
But he knew why.
He knew it was his fault.
He knew that after a week of snide remarks and putdowns that when she’d either seen the hammer or remembered she’d left it there, she’d probably thought she’d better get it before he came down on her like a ton of bricks.
His fault.
It was his fault.
But he couldn’t think about that now. He had to get help.
If they had been in town, he’d have called for an ambulance, but they were so far out that waiting for one to get all the way to the ranch didn’t seem like a good idea. Not if he could get her into the truck and get her to the hospital himself.
He sprang to his feet then and ran inside the cabin, ripping the quilt and blankets from both his bed and the one upstairs that had been witness to so much pleasure the night before.
Then he grabbed a towel from the linen closet, too, threw on the first shirt his fingers touched in the closet and jammed his feet into his boots.
Back outside again he folded the towel and carefully immobilized her neck before covering her with the blankets. Then he raced to the barn, desperate to find anything he could use as a makeshift litter.
He spotted an old door discarded in one corner of the front stall and dragged it back to Victoria.
Hoping he wasn’t doing anything that would cause any more damage, he very carefully eased her onto the door. Then he dragged it to the rear of the truck, lifted one end to brace against the tailgate, picked up the bottom portion and slid the makeshift stretcher and Victoria into the truck bed.
He secured the quilts and blankets around her, tucking them tightly beneath the old door to make sure she was as warm as he could make her.
She was still unconscious, but he saw her wince slightly and heard a small groan of pain as he jostled her.
“It’ll be all right, Tori. I’ll get you to the hospital,” he told her, even though he didn’t know if she could hear him or not.
He jumped out of the truck bed, closed the tailgate and dived behind the wheel to start the engine and pull away from the cabin with the gas pedal to the floor.
The whole time he was cursing himself for the stupidity of forcing Victoria to marry him, for dragging her out to the middle of nowhere, for doing all he’d done to her in the name of revenge.
And for possibly costing himself the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Nine
Adam was alone in the hospital’s waiting room. It was just as well because he couldn’t sit still. He could only pace, from one end of the area to the other and back again. Fast, frenzied, frantic.
The same way he’d driven into Whitehorn. The same way he’d spent the hour he’d been there, pausing only to demand news of Victoria every time he caught sight of someone. News that never came.
Still he paced, nearly out of his mind with worry.
Victoria had seemed to be regaining some consciousness when he’d pulled the truck into the emergency entrance with his horn blaring to gain attention. Doctors and nurses had rushed out to see what the commotion was, and within minutes they’d had Victoria on a gurney, rushing her into the hospital.
And leaving him to wait, not knowing what was going on, if she was okay. Leaving him to pace. To worry. To feel guilty.
Worry and guilt—they were like two demons nipping at his heels.
Worry and guilt made him chant over and over again in his mind, Please let her be okay. Please let her be okay….
Worry and guilt left him thinking that Victoria might have been right when she’d compared him to Jordan Baxter.
Just considering that was a thorn in his side.
Maybe the reason it was such a thorn in his side was that it was true.
Not only was it true that he and Jordan had had similar hard-scrabble upbringings, that they’d both had to claw their ways to the top, Adam admitted to himself now, but what was Jordan Baxter doing in trying to block the sale of the Kincaid ranch to Kincaid heirs?
He was looking for retribution, that’s what. He was hanging on to the past at all costs. He was trying to get what he considered his due.
Which is exactly what I’ve been doing.
Exactly.
Adam couldn’t deny the comparison anymore. He’d been holding a grudge, just the way Jordan Baxter held a grudge against all Kincaids.
He’d been feuding with Victoria, with her family. Just the way Jordan Baxter feuded with the Kincaids.
No, he was no better.
“Damn it all to hell!” he said out loud just before a nurse came out from the examining rooms to write something on a clipboard behind the desk.
Adam made a beeline for the counter.
“Victoria Rutherford Benson,” he snapped. “Do you know how she is yet?”
“I’m sorry. The doctor still hasn’t reported anything to us.”
Adam’s fist hit the countertop all on its own and he spun away from the woman, returning to his pacing, fast, frenzied, frantic.
Back came the thoughts of himself as just another Jordan Baxter.
It was not a comparison Adam liked and he jammed punishing hands through his hair in response.
It was not a comparison he liked particularly in regard to Victoria.
Things had not ended up the way they’d begun. Or the way he’d intended.
He hadn’t factored in that he would come to care for her. That every breath he drew would seem worthy only if she was there. That the sun wouldn’t seem to shine as brightly if she wasn’t basking in it with him. That food wouldn’t taste as good, or that flowers wouldn’t smell as sweet, or that wind rustling through leaves wouldn’t sound as peaceful, if he wasn’t sharing it with her.
That life wouldn’t be worth living without her.
And what had he done to the person who made him feel that way?
He’d abused her.
Okay, so not in the worst sense of the word. But he’d made her work like a hired hand and a maid. He’d been as contrary as a cobra. He’d forced her to marry him.
Even Baxter hadn’t pulled anything that low and despicable.
Marry me or I’ll make sure your parents don’t have the money they need to keep your father alive…
That was about as low and despicable as it could get.
Suddenly all the years after that kiss in her father’s barn—when he’d watched his own father sink farther and farther into a liquor bottle, when he’d watched his family disintegrate by slow increments, when he’d watched his mother struggle, when he’d struggled himself to help support them, to get through college, to make something of himself—all seemed less important.
Less important than what he’d done to Victoria since coming back to Whitehorn.
Less important than what he’d done to a person who seemed to be the reason his heart kept beating.
And now she was in this damn hospital, battered and maybe broken, and all because of him. Because of revenge and retribution and not being able to let go of the past.
Like Jordan Baxter.
And that was wh
en Adam knew what he had to do.
If Victoria lived, he had to make this right. If Victoria lived—
That thought was unendurable so he pushed it away.
She had to live. That’s all there was to it. She had to live and be well.
And he had to atone. He had to undo the damage he’d done. He had to make up for it in the only way he could—no matter how it hurt.
And it would hurt. It would rip him apart and he wasn’t sure he would be the same afterward.
But he wasn’t going to be another Jordan Baxter.
And being ripped apart to accomplish that was no more than he deserved.
When Adam stepped into Victoria’s hospital room once the doctors finally allowed her visitors, the first thing she noticed was that he looked worse than she felt. And that was saying something because she felt pretty bad.
Her head throbbed worse than it ever had in her life and her whole body ached.
She’d been told she had a concussion and more bumps and bruises than anyone could count, but that the battery of tests and X rays that had been done on her revealed that nothing was broken, that there didn’t seem to be any severe internal injuries and that she’d somehow managed to come out of the fall from the cabin roof without any life-threatening problems—probably because she’d had the good fortune to land on relatively soft earth.
The doctor had assured her that resting in the hospital today and tomorrow would make a big improvement. For the time being, the pain medication she’d been given made her as comfortable as possible, even if it did make her woozy.
But the truth was, just seeing Adam helped more than anything medical science could devise.
The Marriage Bargain Page 16
