A Husband By Any Other Name

by Cheryl St. John

  “I wish you had told me that a long time ago,” Dan said to his father.

  Gil looked almost embarrassed. Somehow it was easier for him to talk to Thad than to his sons. But Dan was okay with that. “It’s hard to change,” Gil said simply.

  Dan nodded.

  “I’m happy here with you and Lorrie,” Gil said with a shrug.

  It had always been obvious that the old man was fond of Lorraine. She was like his own daughter.

  “I have more time to spend with your kids than I ever did with my own,” he went on.

  And Dan realized that was true. Gil had put his heart and soul into the orchards, building a legacy that was now Dan’s and would remain for his grandchildren.

  Did it matter what name his father called him? It was Dan’s accomplishments he was proud of, Dan’s children he took an interest in, Dan he thought was a good son and husband and father. Dan.

  And at that moment Dan realized he could live with that.

  A light rain pattered against the roof. “You’d better go up to bed, son.”

  Thad rubbed his grandfather’s arm through his shirtsleeve and picked up his ipad from the end table. “’Night, Grampa.”

  After he’d gone, Dan unfolded the sofa bed and brought pillows from the cupboard. “I could turn my office into a room for you,” he offered once again. “That way you’d have a little more privacy.”

  “I’m gonna take you up on that this time,” Gil replied, surprising him. “I liked my room upstairs, but it was getting harder and harder to do all those steps.”

  “Good,” Dan replied. “We’ll do it this week. I’ll call the cable company and have Internet connected up there. Dad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t resent anything about my childhood anymore.” And it was true. His father had made mistakes, but who didn’t?

  “I wish your ma knew how you turned out,” Gil said.

  “I’m sure she does.”

  His father nodded. “’Night, son.”

  “’Night, Dad.” He took the stairs two at a time, feeling more unburdened than he had in years. After all this time his life was coming together. There was only one more thing he needed to work out. And finally... finally, he had an idea of how to do it.

  “We haven’t done this for a long time,” Lorrie commented the following day at lunch.

  “Feels good, eh?” Dan asked.

  The hostess at the Lied Center dining room led the two of them to a table by the windows and told them what the silver-domed buffet dishes held that noon.

  “It is different getting away without the kids, and on a weekday, too,” Lorrie said after the young woman had gone. She’d been surprised when Dan had asked her.

  “Cedra and Gil were happy to stay with Autumn. Tom went into Omaha for bike parts.”

  “He’s become obsessed with that bike, hasn’t he?”

  Dan shrugged.

  They ordered the buffet and helped themselves to the delicious entrees, vegetables and dessert. Afterward, they sipped coffee.

  A few other diners ate in the spacious sunlit room, decorated with antique cabinets and crockery, but none were seated nearby.

  “I didn’t sleep very well,” Dan admitted.

  “You should have been exhausted.”

  “I was. But I couldn’t stop thinking about overhearing Thad and my father last night.” He’d related the conversation to Lorrie when he’d come to bed.

  “We’re never too old to change, I guess,” she said.

  His eyes appeared more blue in the sunlight streaming through the window. His gaze moved from her face to her fingers on her cup. “I realized that offhand recognition is enough for me,” he went on. 'It doesn’t matter what he thinks my name is. You were right. I was caught up in having him acknowledge me as Dan, but I am Dan. Just because he calls me Tom doesn’t change who I really am.”

  Lorrie stared at him for a full minute.

  Dan raised his eyes and shifted under her scrutiny. “In other words, you’re okay with being known as Tom?”

  He nodded.

  “What about Tom?”

  “I talked to him this morning before he left. He’s actually sympathetic to what we’re going through here, and he’s content with being Buzz. He’s called himself Buzz for years. In fact, he’s thinking of having his name legally changed.”

  Lorrie’s eyes widened with disbelief. She blinked and turned to stare out the windows at the breathtaking fall scenery for several minutes. When she turned back, Dan’s heart was in his eyes. The uncertainty and vulnerability struck a responsive chord in her heart. "Have you thought about that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Having your name legally changed?”

  He nodded.

  She took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts. “How would that make things... right?”

  “The only ones it makes a difference for are the kids, right?” he asked. “They are the only reason I don’t just tell everyone the truth. And for you, Lorraine. I don’t want you humiliated.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” she hurried to say. “And Dan, I’m so incredibly sorry I panicked and threatened you the way I did. I’ve felt terrible about it ever since. I wouldn’t... I couldn’t...” Tears threatened and she fought them, blinking.

  He covered her hand with his. “Wait for me. I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded, gathered her composure, and watched him walk to the far side of the room, pay the cashier and slip out the door. Several minutes later, he returned. “Come on.”

  She picked up her purse and followed.

  Dan took her hand and led her past the hotel registration desk. One of the young women stared, then turned and whispered something to the woman beside her.

  “What are they staring at?” Lorrie asked.

  “Tom told me how nice the rooms are here. They probably think I bring a different woman every week.”

  Lorrie turned from the gaping women to Dan, not finding the mistaken identity amusing. “You mean they think—you—that we’re...?”

  “Probably.” Dan pulled her down a long hallway and slid a key in a lock. “Does it matter what they think when we know the truth?”

  She let him usher her into the room. That was the whole crux of the matter, wasn’t it? That was how they were going to be able to deal with this. By not caring what others thought, as long as the two of them knew the truth. “No. I guess it doesn’t,” she conceded aloud.

  Finally, she took stock of her surroundings and glanced around the elegantly furnished suite. “What are we doing here?”

  “I think you wanted to tell me something. I have something to say, too, and I thought it might be easier to do it where we’d be alone. I mean, really alone. No one knows we’re here... well, except for those two at the desk, and I don’t think they really care.” One side of his mouth quirked up.

  He opened a window overlooking the fall-dressed countryside. A fresh breeze filled the room and he came back to sit on the edge of the bed.

  Lorrie tossed her purse on a low table, slipped off her shoes, and propped herself against the headboard. “Not as comfortable as our bed.”

  His gaze moved from her eyes to her hair, then slid down her body to the bare legs she’d raised to the bed. He pulled her feet into his lap and massaged them. “Tell me now, Lorraine.”

  “What?”

  “What you started to say out there. Were you going to say... that you wouldn’t have left me?”

  How she’d cursed herself for that rash statement! “Surely you knew,” she said softly, “that I didn’t mean it.”

  “I would have deserved it,” he replied. “You were right. I was trying to appease myself at your expense, at the children's expense. You were just trying to protect them.”

  “All of that,” she said, pulling her feet behind her and leaning toward him, “was so unimportant... so trivial compared to what’s of real value here.”

  “And what’s that?”

&n
bsp; Her feelings were so intense, she was afraid to look him in the eye. She studied the coverlet. “Our family,” she whispered. “Our children.”

  He waited silently.

  “When I thought Autumn was going to... going to—”

  “Don’t—”

  "Die,” she choked out. “I knew then that none of this really mattered. Not when it was in perspective. You saved her life,” she whispered, still experiencing the same awe.

  “I only did what I had to,” he said.

  “You did what I couldn’t.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  “If I hadn’t been there, you would have been able to do what you had to.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not why you changed your mind?” he questioned roughly. “Because I knew how to help Autumn.”

  She looked up then. “Of course not! But that’s what showed me. You’re her father. You’re my husband.” A well of thick emotion rose to her throat. “You’re a wonderful father to the twins. You’ve made it a personal goal to be especially sensitive to their needs.”

  “Because I knew how it felt.”

  “Regardless of why, you’ve done it. And—Thad,” she managed to say around a lump of tears.

  Dan didn’t move. Didn’t try to hold her gaze when she dropped it to his chest.

  “All those years you thought he was Tom’s child. You thought I’d conceived him with your brother. But you loved him anyway.” Her voice still held a note of awe. “You were a father to him anyway.” The last was a whisper.

  Lorrie looked up and saw his tears. “How that must have hurt you.” Her own tear ran down her nose to her lip and she caught it with her tongue. “And when I told you the truth, you made the decision to forgive me.” A sob caught in her throat.

  Dan reached for her face, and she grasped his wrist and nuzzled her cheek against his palm. “I love you,” he said hoarsely.

  “You love me crazy,” she said to him. “You love me in a way that makes you pretend to be someone you’re not just to have me. And the way you love lets you forgive and keep loving.”

  “Well, then I guess you must love me crazy, too.” He rubbed his thumb across her lips. “Because after you knew I was Dan, you still slept with me and made love to me. I know you love me.”

  She had never denied it.

  “The only question is whether or not you love me enough to forgive me.”

  She studied the blue eyes that waited with the tragic question in their depths. She regarded the face she knew so well—lips she’d kissed a million times, the silver hair above his ears that hadn’t been there when they’d first become lovers. Love him enough to forgive him? She was ashamed of herself for making him wonder, for making him wait.

  His thumb traced her lower lip.

  For the first time she realized she’d been ashamed of needing him so much that forgiving him had always been the only thing she wanted to do.

  She loved Daniel Beckett. And about that, there was no choice.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Well?”

  Lorrie recognized the apprehension in the word, in his eyes. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “I don’t want to lose us.”

  His hand slid from her cheek and caressed her fingers. He brought them to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

  “I was ashamed of how much I needed you,” she confessed. “Like I thought I would somehow lose my dignity by wanting you even though you’d done this awful thing.”

  “It was awful,” he said. “I know that. And it’s okay for you to say it to me. That first day, when you were so mad, it absolved me somehow. I deserved your anger. After that, when you got over being mad, I had to see your hurt. I knew how disappointed and... disillusioned you were with me. Fury was easier to deal with.”

  Lorrie grazed her fingertips over his lips and across his cheek, outlining the face she loved so well, bringing her touch back to his lips. “I want to put our life back together,” she said. “And I forgive you.”

  His mouth stilled on her fingers. He raised his eyes to hers. Lorrie waited for him to say something. Releasing her hand, he shifted to one hip and drew his wallet from his pocket. Curious, Lorrie watched him open it and shake something from the key flap. Her wedding rings fell into his palm.

  He held them toward her in his long fingers. “Will you marry me?”

  She knew, as she’d always known but had been too proud to see, that this was the man she loved with all her heart. It didn’t matter what his name was as long as he loved her. She held out her hand and steadied it while he slid the rings on her finger. “I don’t have yours with me,” she whispered with regret.

  “You can give it to me on our wedding day.” He covered her lips with his and Lorrie tasted tears—hers or his, she didn’t know.

  “I can’t make up for all the hurt I caused you,” he whispered against her cheek.

  She cupped his face and kissed him hard, kissed him fervently, with all the need and want and desperation welling in her heart. “I forgive you,” she said again with barely a pause.

  Catching her intensity, Dan pushed her back on the bed, urging her mouth wider and engaging her tongue in an erotic match. He always made her feel this way— sexy, eager, aglow with love for him. Wanting more, she reached for his shirt, unfastened the buttons, and pushed the fabric from his shoulders.

  Dan yanked the shirt from his jeans and shrugged out of it, pulling her cotton top over her head and coaxing her out of her shorts, while kissing her neck and shoulders.

  He tugged the band from her braid and loosened her hair with his fingers. “I should have told you from the beginning,” he said.

  Lorrie caught his face between both palms and held him still. “You’re going to have to make me some promises.”

  “Okay.”

  “No more regrets. No more guilt. They’ve eaten at you for too long, and that’s behind us. You can’t be any sorrier than you are. I can’t be any sorrier than I am. We just go on from here.”

  Beneath her hands, his cheeks were warm and slightly rough, a delicious masculine texture. “Okay.”

  “Promise me, Beckett.”

  He touched her hair. “I promise.”

  “Good. Enough of that sorry stuff, then.” She led his lips back to hers and wrapped her arms around his solid shoulders.

  Dan pressed her back on the bed, running his wonderful hands over her skin. She helped him ease off her underclothing and pulled back the bedding while he removed the rest of his clothing.

  He slid his warm solid length alongside her and held her close.

  “This feels absolutely decadent,” she sighed. “Broad daylight and no one expecting us.”

  “We should do this more often.”

  “We couldn’t do this any more often. We’d wear ourselves out.” She smiled against his shoulder.

  “I didn’t mean this—” he almost said, but she cut him off with a kiss. He returned the kiss, took control of it, pulling her tongue against his and stealing her breath.

  He shifted and sat back so he could take in the beauty of this woman he loved with his whole being. He made her feel desirable and on fire, as he always did. She smiled and ran her hands up his arms to his shoulders, loving the play of flesh and muscle.

  Dan spanned her waist, kissed her navel, and his hair, cool and silky, brushed her stomach. She threaded her fingers through the mass and sighed at the wild pleasure his hands and lips built in her body. Lorrie closed her eyes and gave herself over to her lover.

  His touches, his kisses elicited an exquisite shudder that rippled through her body. She closed her eyes against the pleasure, then opened them and found his glittering with excitement, his lips wet and parted.

  He held her gaze; his breath alone bestowed lavish pleasure. He touched her purposefully, intimately, revering and wooing, his caress ardent yet tender. Lorrie caught her breath and surrendered to the ero
tic delight. She clutched the sheets and groaned, spinning... out of control.

  Dan... was always... the one in control. If only... she could... make him... lose his composure, see him... unable to hold back. Maybe... maybe... she did hold the power....

  A shivery tremor of delight coursed through Lorraine’s body. Dan loved the way she moved and the sounds she made, the smell of her skin and the taste of her eagerness. There was nothing more beautiful than his Lorraine.

  She turned slightly. “Now, Dan... now...” she rasped.

  Her words reached him at the same time her hands grasped at his shoulders.

  Dan was drawn into the mindless pleasure she offered, drawn by her movements and her voice and her straining impatience. He’d always prided himself in taking her to the edge and keeping her there, prolonging her enjoyment. He’d never been unable to hold back, never been helpless to the demand of his body and her soft cries. She kissed him, enveloped him, sapping his strength and control.

  “Dan,” she panted against his mouth, “Dan.” She gasped and arched.

  He was powerless to hold back... powerless.

  With his face buried in her neck, he allowed the wash of feelings to suffuse him. Humble. Complete. Embarrassed.

  She surprised him by shifting in his embrace and rolling him to his back. She leaned above him, her silky hair flowing across his chest. The skin of her face and neck and even her breasts was exquisitely flushed. Her warm honey eyes held an amazing glow. She kissed his chest, slid up and plucked kisses along his neck and his jaw. “I love you, Daniel Beckett.”

  He couldn’t say anything. Fourteen years of restraint welled up and prevented anything he might have thought to reply. He touched her hair and finally, when the wave of emotion ebbed, he spoke. “I love you, Lorraine.”

  She kissed his lips. “When shall we do it?”

  “You’ll have to give me a few minutes, babe—”

  “Get married, ” she said with a mock blow to his ribs.

  “Oh.” He cradled one hand behind his head and rubbed her shoulder with the other. “We could tell everyone we’re renewing our vows,” he suggested.

  She trailed a finger through the hair on his chest. “We’d have to wait until our anniversary for that.”