Even if he did look as if he’d been through the wringer.
“This was not how I planned for us to spend this morning,” she joked weakly, forcing a smile she almost didn’t have the strength for.
Adam kept standing with his back to the door, not coming nearer. And not saying anything. He merely studied her, solemnly, soberly, his handsome face lined and drawn.
Victoria felt chilled and she had the sinking feeling that he was mad at her again.
“I’m sorry about all this,” she said then. “I know it was dumb of me to go up onto the roof when it was slippery, but it just didn’t occur to me that it would be. I saw the hammer I’d left up there and wanted to get it down.”
“Water under the bridge,” he finally said, dismissing her explanation in a voice so low, so quiet, so serious, it was difficult to hear.
“Then I was going to sneak back into bed and wake you up,” she informed him, trying for another weak smile and a hint of insinuation she hoped might coax him closer.
But nothing did the trick. He stayed where he was, staring at her.
Maybe she looked as bad as she felt, too, she thought.
She was about to say something along those lines when Adam’s eyebrows pulled together and he said, “You scared the hell out of me.”
She could hear in his voice just how shaken up he’d been and wondered if maybe that was what was wrong with him.
“They told me I’ll be fine in a few days,” she offered.
He nodded, as if he’d been informed of the same thing. But he still didn’t leave his post at the door.
Victoria tried a different tack. She summoned every bit of strength and will she had and patted the mattress in invitation.
That only got her a darker frown when what she wanted was for him to sit on the side of the bed and hold her hand, kiss her and let her know everything really would be all right—because she was beginning to get the feeling that maybe everything wouldn’t be all right.
“I’ve done some thinking while I was waiting out there for you,” he said then.
Very formally, Victoria thought.
But even so, she didn’t expect what he said next.
“I’ve decided to give you your freedom.”
She really did feel light-headed and she wondered if she was actually hearing what she thought she was hearing. It seemed possible that she wasn’t, that she was misunderstanding. How could they go from a night of passion to him breaking things off with her?
He was talking again and she forced herself to concentrate.
“I’ve already called my attorney and asked him to look into whether we need a divorce or an annulment. He’ll also draw up the papers to file a quit claim deed on your parents’ property. I’m giving it back to you free and clear to do with as you please. Keep it, sell it again, whatever. You can go back to Boston, to your teaching, to your life, and forget this ever happened.”
So she hadn’t misunderstood. He really was breaking things off with her.
Victoria felt as if she were hitting the ground all over again.
“What should I forget ever happened?” she asked. “The fall or the marriage?”
“Both,” he said without having to consider it.
“I don’t understand… What…” All of the confusion she felt was there in her voice, raw and ragged. “You’re…ending things?”
“I’m giving you your freedom,” he repeated as if nothing could be simpler.
It did sound as if it seemed simple to him. As if he were downsizing a company, laying off an employee the way he’d no doubt laid off many employees before.
But Victoria still couldn’t believe her ears. “So that’s it? This is the end…of you and me? Of the marriage?”
“And of my going after any kind of revenge,” he said as if confirming her list and adding to it. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m not even too sure what I was thinking to make you actually marry me. The past is the past and nothing can change it. I should have known that. I should have thought about it. But I didn’t. I didn’t think anything through until just now in the waiting room. So, yes, this is it. The end.”
Victoria felt very cold suddenly, despite the heavy hospital blankets that covered her. “I’ve had my comeuppance and you’ve had your retribution, and now we go our separate ways—is that what you’re telling me?”
“I’m just telling you that you’re free.”
“And last night…that was…what? Part of the plan? The culmination? The coup de grace?”
Even from the distance she saw him clench his jaw so firmly it flexed a muscle in his temple. “Last night was…”
But he didn’t seem to know how to finish that.
“Last night was what?” she demanded, hearing her voice crack and wishing it hadn’t.
He didn’t answer her, though. He just shook his head and pushed himself away from the door to stand tall and straight and strong. But he still didn’t take so much as a step in her direction.
“I’ll have my lawyer contact you with the details,” he said then. “If you need anything, just let him know.”
“Mergers and acquisitions. Go in, take over, split things up, cast off the deadwood,” she said, almost more to herself than to him, in a voice that echoed what she felt. “And I’m just the deadwood.”
He started to shake his head again but stopped short, raised his chiseled chin slightly and said, “Have a nice life, Tori.”
Then he turned and walked out.
No matter how hard she tried, Victoria couldn’t help wondering if what Adam had put her through during the previous week was the punishment for her old crime, or if making her let down her guard and feel what she felt for him and then setting her free when it was the last thing she wanted had been his real goal all along.
But she did know one thing.
If she’d broken his heart twenty years ago, he had his restitution for it now.
Because he’d just done the same thing to her.
Ten
Never had Victoria spent a worse day and night than that following Adam’s departure from her hospital room.
Pain—physical and emotional—was her only companion as she drifted into sleep, only to wake again and again with the sense that something was terribly wrong. Then she remembered that Adam had given her the heave-ho.
She sank into renewed despair that no amount of pain medication could ease before sleep overtook her once more to repeat the cycle.
Each time she recalled the cause of her emotional roller coaster, she asked herself if she could have been so blind that she hadn’t realized that even in making love to her, Adam had only been seeking the best, most effective way to get even with her. As the hours wore on, she became more and more convinced that that was all his lovemaking had been about—misleading her so he could strike the final, most devastating blow.
By the middle of the next day she’d decided the best thing for her to do was to leave the hospital where she had nothing to do but marinate her own thoughts and dejection, and get out of Whitehorn as soon as she could.
A visit from her doctor after the lunch she sent back untouched gave her the go-ahead to be released. But just when she expected the next knock on the hospital door to be the nurse who was to go through her release instructions, Victoria was surprised to look up to find Crystal Cobbs poking her head into the room.
“Hi,” Crystal said simply. “Want a little company?”
“Sure,” Victoria answered, motioning the other woman in. “I’m just waiting for the papers I need to sign so I can be let go.”
Crystal came into the room and sat in the visitor’s chair, while Victoria raised the head of her bed so she was sitting straighter.
“I…heard you had an accident and were in here,” Crystal said when they were both settled.
“There never were any secrets kept for long in Whitehorn,” Victoria responded, assuming the town grapevine had somehow gotten hold of the information and
spread it.
“What happened?” Crystal asked.
Victoria gave her the whole story.
Well, not the whole story, although there was a part of her that longed to confide in someone about everything that had happened. But she’d only just met Crystal and that didn’t seem like something she should do to an almost-complete stranger. So she only explained the fall from the roof.
Crystal nodded through the entire tale as if she already knew most of it.
“So, how are you?” she asked when Victoria had finished.
Victoria couldn’t answer that as fully as she would have liked to, either. She couldn’t say that none of her physical injuries hurt as bad as what she’d felt since Adam had ended things between them. As bad as the fact that they had no future together. As bad as the fact that he wouldn’t be a part of her life at all.
She had to stick to the health matters, briefly outlining them without going into too much detail.
Then Crystal said, “I, uh, also heard that Adam went back out to his ranch near the mountains rather than staying here with you. That seemed kind of odd. Is everything okay between the two of you?”
It was funny, but had that question come from anyone else it might have seemed like prying, like someone just looking for new grist for the mill. But from the first time Victoria had met Crystal she’d felt such a rapport with the other woman that that wasn’t how Victoria took it.
She took it as genuinely concerned interest and she decided to suddenly give in to her need to talk to a friend, to give in to the urge she’d had to be completely honest and open, even if she didn’t know the other woman well. And so she ended up pouring out her heart to Crystal Cobbs, hoping Crystal wouldn’t mind too much.
“I knew something more was going on,” Crystal said when Victoria had laid everything out, beginning with the teenage kiss in her father’s barn and ending with how rotten she’d felt since seeing Adam for the last time.
“But you know what I think?” Crystal asked. “I think that things with Adam aren’t what they seem.”
“He made it pretty clear. He doesn’t even want to see me or have contact with me. He said his lawyer would be in touch.”
“Because seeing you would make it harder for him to go through with this. Harder for him not to be carried away by what he feels for you.”
“What he feels for me is contempt.”
“I don’t think so. What I think is that he feels really, really bad that you were hurt in the middle of this revenge scheme of his and that turned everything around for him. I think he’s fallen in love with you and can’t stand that he brought harm to you in the process. And I’ll tell you something else—I think you’ve fallen in love with him, too.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Victoria was quick to protest.
“Yes, you do. If you just let yourself recognize it. I also think that the two of you can have a happy future together if you can just open up to him, tell him you love him, and cross this one last hurdle.”
Victoria wanted to believe that. She really did. But she was so afraid of even more rejection, of having to hear Adam tell her how much he really hated her, that not believing it was simply self-protective.
She shook her head in denial. “You don’t know how cold he was. How—”
“I know from what you’ve said that he’s a proud man who has learned over time to detach himself from his emotions—maybe because he’s known too much pain of his own from the years after that kiss. I know that if you don’t go to him and tell him how you feel, you may never get together and you’ll suffer for that your whole life.”
Crystal sounded so certain.
Victoria could only wish she shared that certainty when in truth, she didn’t.
It must have shown in her expression because Crystal said, “I’ll tell you what. Let’s check you out of here and I’ll drive you to Adam’s ranch. Just give honesty a chance and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, all you have to do is call me and I’ll come back to pick you up.”
Face Adam again after he’d dumped her? Let him know how she felt? That seemed like asking for heartache and the proverbial slap in the face.
“What do you have to lose?” Crystal urged.
“My dignity, for one thing.”
“Dignity won’t keep you warm on a cold night. It won’t keep you from pining for the man you love and wondering forever if it might have worked out between you if you had just had the courage to let him know how you feel.”
“I didn’t say I loved him,” Victoria reminded her.
“Still,” Crystal insisted. “Risking a little dignity in trade for a whole lifetime of happiness—that doesn’t seem like such a bad deal.”
That was true enough.
“All my things are still out there,” Victoria mused, hearing the waffling in her resolve even before she knew she was actually considering Crystal’s suggestion. “And I do need them one way or another.”
“Perfect! An excuse to get you in the door.” Crystal charged to her feet as if she were on a mission. “I’ll go hurry up your discharge and pull my car up to the door. You get dressed.”
Out Crystal went as if any delay might give Victoria the opportunity to change her mind. Which maybe she should do, Victoria thought even as she eased herself out of bed and gathered her clothes from the closet.
Maybe she should change her mind, accept that there was nothing between her and Adam but animosity and a bad past.
But something inside just wouldn’t let her do that.
Something inside agreed with Crystal and told her she really had fallen in love with Adam. Long ago and again now.
Long ago, the love she’d felt for him had been puppy love, now it was more than that. It was a grown-up love. The kind she’d witnessed between her parents all her life. The kind that lasted. That kept two people together and sustained them through thick and thin.
The kind that couldn’t be ignored.
Realizing that made Victoria finally understand why she’d been in so much misery since Adam had given her her freedom.
She didn’t want her freedom.
She wanted Adam. And a life together and a family and everything they’d talked about, everything she’d ever dreamed of.
How was she going to have any chance for all that if she didn’t go out to his ranch and tell him how she felt? If she didn’t tell him that regardless of their bad past or their bad start now, he was the one man who could make her blood heat just by walking into a room. That he was the one man who could occupy her every waking thought and then still haunt her dreams. That he was the one man whose touch, whose kiss, she seemed to need more than she needed air to breathe. That he was the one man she could imagine herself spending the rest of her life with.
That he was the one man she loved in spite of everything.
And if he says, “Tough luck, I wasn’t kidding. I don’t want you”? she asked herself.
That thought stopped her in her tracks and made her reconsider everything she’d just talked herself into.
But then something else Crystal had said rang in her ears as if her newfound friend was there to repeat it.
Courage.
That was what Crystal had said, Victoria thought suddenly. That everything might work out if only she had the courage to let Adam know how she felt.
Victoria couldn’t help reminding herself that courage—or the lack of it—was what had lost her Adam all those years ago.
The same lack of courage that could lose him all over again.
She couldn’t let that happen. She might embarrass herself, she might sacrifice her dignity, but she couldn’t let cowardice wreak any more havoc on her life.
So instead she went back to getting dressed and pointed out to herself as she did that even though Adam had ended the relationship he hadn’t once said it was because he didn’t want her. He hadn’t once said he didn’t care for her.
He’d said he’d made a mistake by forcing her to mar
ry him. He’d said he hadn’t thought it through. He’d basically said he hadn’t realized what consequences it all might have had and now that he had, he was rectifying the situation.
Those weren’t the same things as saying he didn’t want her, that he didn’t love her, she told herself to bolster that flagging courage. In fact, if he still hated her, wouldn’t he have been satisfied with those negative consequences? Wouldn’t rectifying the situation have been the last thing he’d have wanted?
And what about his actions?
Okay, so on the work front he’d been a little tough on her. But things had eased up—he’d eased up even before they’d made love.
She thought again about that night of lovemaking. It had been too incredible to have originated in anything less than a deep and abiding connection between them. Earlier he’d been too reticent to make love to her because he hadn’t wanted it to be out of some sense of duty or obligation, out of any power plays or because she felt at his mercy. That wasn’t the action of a man solely bent on revenge. It was more likely an indication that something else had been going on with him. That he could be as involved with her as she was with him.
Hadn’t he told her himself how much the accident had scared him? Hadn’t she heard it with her own two ears? Seen it with her own two eyes? Weren’t those signs of the guilt Crystal had mentioned?
Victoria thought they were. He wouldn’t have felt guilt if he still had only contempt for her. But guilt could have been the impetus for him to set her free.
“All ready to sign a few papers and hear my speech on how to take care of yourself so you can go home?”
The nurse’s voice broke into Victoria’s thoughts as the uniformed woman came into her room.
Victoria looked up from snapping the snaps on Adam’s shirt—the shirt he’d worn the night they’d made love, the shirt she’d grabbed off the floor the next morning and had been wearing when she’d fallen, the shirt that still smelled of him. She knew she’d never be more ready than she was at that moment.
“Let’s do it,” she answered the nurse.
But she was talking about more than being released from the hospital. Because by then she’d worked up a full head of steam.
The Marriage Bargain Page 17
