Embracing Danger

by Olivia Jaymes

  She loved him so very much and wanted only the best for him. His happiness was miles more important than her own. She could only hope he would forgive her someday, although she wouldn’t be forgiving herself for last night. Not ever. It had been weak and indulgent and she despised herself for what she’d done and was going to have to do.

  “Do you want to go somewhere for breakfast or order room service?” Shane asked when he joined her in the main room. He’d put on a pair of blue jeans and a white button down shirt, the seams straining at his wide shoulders.

  She was about to take the light out of his beautiful green eyes and she hated herself for it.

  “Actually, I have a few things to do this morning. I was thinking about just grabbing a muffin and coffee on the way.”

  She began gathering up her sunglasses and room key, stuffing them into her purse. She heard Shane moving behind her and then he was standing right next to her, his fingers twirling one of her still damp curls. “That’s fine with me. What are we doing today? Just remember that we need to check on that detective that worked your mother’s case.”

  Licking her suddenly dry lips, she zipped her bag closed, keeping her gaze studiously away from his. “Why don’t you do that and I’ll go run my errands?”

  His warm chuckle sent shivers down her spine and her body stiffened when he pulled her into his arms. “Why would we do that separately, sweetheart? I don’t mind taking you where you need to go. If you want to do some shopping, hell, I’ll even hold your packages.”

  Tears pricked the back of her eyes and a pain sliced through her heart, but then she deserved it. If she could take all his pain away and bear it herself she would in a second with no hesitation. “I thought I’d go by myself.”

  Her choked words along with her rigid posture must have tipped him off that all was not right in the world. He slowly let her go, dropping his arms to his side and stepped back, regarding her steadily.

  “Jesus, I’m so fucking dumb.” He walked over to the windows, his jaw tight and his expression pained. “Say it.”

  “Shane—”

  “Say it, goddammit,” he snarled, whirling on the heel of his boot, his eyes blazing with anger. “Don’t wimp out on me now. Fucking say it.”

  The words “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you” were right on the tip of her tongue but somehow she wrestled those feelings to the ground even as she ripped her own heart out of her chest. She didn’t have the luxury of thinking about herself.

  “Last night…” she began, watching as his fury turned to anguish. She had to push every word out through a lump the size of Texas in her throat. “Last night was wonderful and amazing but we can’t continue this. We’re grown adults now and what we had was over long ago. We have our own lives.”

  “You are such a liar. I know you felt what I felt last night and this morning. I’m not some naive kid anymore, baby. I’m a grown ass man that knows when a woman feels more than just a great orgasm. But for some reason you’re bound and determined to pretend that you don’t feel a thing and for the life of me I can’t understand why. What are you so afraid of? Is it me? I know I’ve sown some wild oats but that’s because you left. It’s all in the past now.”

  He looked almost hopeful and she couldn’t let him have even a glimmer of it. It would be too cruel. “I’m not lying. Last night was a mistake.”

  Arden was shocked that lightning didn’t strike her dead. From the angrily amused look on Shane’s face she hadn’t convinced him of her sincerity.

  “You’re right, honey. Last night was a mistake and I made it.” He moved closer so she could feel his warm breath on her face and smell the clean scent of his body wash. Her fingers yearned to reach out and touch him and she had to curl her hands into fists, the nails digging into her palms to stop herself. “We should have cleared the air about the past before I allowed us to make love again. But it’s not too late. We can do it right now.”

  No, no, no. This wasn’t any better. Talking about the past wasn’t good.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Her question was a delay tactic. She knew good and well what he wanted to know.

  “I think we should start with the summer we dated and go from there. I imagine we have quite a bit of ground to cover. I’ll order us some breakfast. You might want to get comfortable. I think we’ll be here for a while.”

  Her mind whirled with possibilities and they all ended up with her running out of the door, which was ridiculous. He’d catch her before her hand was on the lever. From the determined look on his face, he’d follow her to the ends of the earth to get his answers.

  Dammit, she’d never wanted him to know but he wasn’t giving her many options. He was right, she was a terrible liar and she didn’t have one handy that would answer his burning question. Sinking down on the sofa, she waited while he ordered breakfast. Her brain was still in denial that she was actually going to have to tell him the truth. Even her best friend back in New York didn’t know. It was private and painful and she was going to have to find the words to tell him.

  Sitting down on a chair to her right, he stretched out his long legs and handed her one of the two cups of coffee he’d poured from the bar in the corner of the room. “I guess I’ll start since you look like you’re about to run for the far hills. I’m pissed that you didn’t tell me you were leaving. I thought we meant more to each other than that, Arden. Of course your daddy made sure to shatter any notions I might have had that you cared for me. He said you were happy to be moving on and glad to see me in your rearview mirror.”

  Arden could hear her own heart pounding in her ears, heavy and growing ever louder. He’d cut to the quick, but then she’d hurt him badly and she didn’t blame him for hating her. She’d expected it, although seeing his green eyes filled with distrust instead of love was more painful than she’d imagined.

  Swallowing the lump lodged in her throat, she tried to find the words to express emotions that even now she wasn’t sure she understood. “We did mean a lot to each other.”

  His eyes narrowed, appraising her from head to toe but not in a tender fashion. This was something different, something colder. He was trying to decide if she was lying.

  “Then why did you go?”

  “We always knew I had to go back to school, Shane. It was always the plan. You had to go back to school too.”

  He wasn’t buying what she was selling.

  “Yes, at the end of August. You left three weeks early. Why?”

  She was holding the cup so tightly her knuckles were white. Loosening her fingers, she took a few deep breaths as she tried to find an answer that would satisfy him.

  “It was time,” she said softly, avoiding his gaze that saw way too much. “It was time for me to go.”

  He didn’t say a word. He simply sat there, his brows raised waiting for her to continue. She fought the urge to speak more but she knew she’d lose. A few minutes later, she broke.

  “Dammit, Shane. What do you expect me to say? Better yet, why did you expect me to stay? What would have happened if I had?” Too nervous to stay still, she hopped to her feet, her arms wrapped protectively around her torso. She was shaking with anger, plus a whole lot of remembered hurt. And love. The memories of how they loved each other had never died. “Were we going to get married and live happily ever after? Were the Andersons and Cavendishs going to bury the hatchet and have picnics in the park while you and I produced grandchildren for them to dote on? Was there a dog and picket fence in this scenario too? Were you honestly going to give up your playboy ways and settle down with me, Shane? Be faithful with one woman for the rest of your life? Could you even do it?”

  Arden grabbed a tissue from the bar and dabbed at her runny nose and teary eyes. She’d sworn not to become emotional over all of this again but here she was, blubbering like it all happened yesterday.

  “Yes.”

  Whirling around, her gaze locked onto Shane, still in his chair but he
was now sitting up straight, his shoulders tense.

  “Yes,” he repeated, a white ring around his lips.

  Shaking her head, she sagged against the bar, the bile in her stomach threatening to make an appearance. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Slowly he stood, towering over her, his gaze never wavering. “I said yes. Yes, I wanted to marry you. Yes, I wanted our families to bury the hatchet. Yes, I wanted to have a family, and a dog, and a goddamn picket fence with you. Yes, I wanted to settle down and yes, I planned on being faithful for the rest of my damn life with you. And do you know why, Arden?”

  He was standing so close now she could smell his aftershave and feel the heat from his body. Her legs grew weak and she had to grab onto the counter for support as she stared helplessly into his green eyes that at the moment were almost black with emotion.

  “Because I fucking love you. So yes, I planned on all those things. I thought you did too. It’s what we talked about.”

  She gathered up the shreds of her courage and stood tall under his scrutiny, despite the urge to double over in agony. Hearing him say he loved her was almost more than she could bear. She’d cherish those words until the day she died. “And that’s why I left you.”

  He frowned, clearly not understanding what she meant. “You left because we planned a future together? That doesn’t make any goddamn sense, Arden. Unless of course you didn’t love me but this morning leads me to believe you did. Or at least you do now.”

  All the walls she’d so carefully built around her had fallen to the ground and she stood before him with no defenses. “I did love you and that’s why I left. Because that future we planned? With the house and the kids and the dog? That wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t happen.”

  “Why not?” Shane’s gaze had softened and she had to look away from the love shining in his eyes. “Because of Ben? Honey, we could have handled your father. Together we could have handled anything.”

  She shook her head, tears beginning to stream down her face, her throat tight with love and pain. She could taste the salt on her lips and she scrubbed at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “I left because I was filled with tumors. I left because they thought I might have cancer.” She looked up to see the growing horror in his expression. “I left because I knew no matter what happened I wouldn’t be able to give you those children. I had a hysterectomy, Shane. They took everything and with it all of our dreams. I left you not because I didn’t love you enough, but because I loved you. Too much.”

  Chapter Nineteen

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  Shane’s legs were numb and he stumbled backwards to sit on the couch, still too shocked to respond. The pain in his chest felt like she’d taken a filleting knife and sliced into the flesh dozens of times. All this time he thought she’d left because she didn’t love him after all.

  Fuck. Shit.

  “Cancer?”

  He’d only been able to get out one word, his voice like ground glass. A sweep of fear ran through him and his gaze ran up and down her, looking for any telltale signs that she might still be sick. If she was he’d take her to every specialist in the world to cure whatever disease she might have. He’d spend his last dollar making sure she was healthy.

  Arden’s hands wrung together and she shook her head. “Luckily it wasn’t cancer. But they didn’t like the way a growth looked on one of my ovaries and combined with my other issues…”

  He swallowed hard and tried to calm himself but he could still hear the pounding of his pulse in his ears. “Other issues? What other issues? Maybe you should start from the beginning.”

  She moved over to the windows, staring out over the city. “I don’t know if you remember but I had really painful and long periods. They were really hard on me and I often had to take to my bed and just sleep through the first day or so.”

  “Yes, I remember, although I also remember that you tried to play it off as no big deal. But it was, wasn’t it?”

  How much had she not told him?

  She nodded slowly, still not meeting his gaze. “It was. My uterus was filled with fibroid tumors and I was on prescription painkillers for my menstrual cramps. I also had severe endometriosis so they put me on the pill when I was seventeen after surgery to help correct the condition. That helped for a while but eventually the pain came back even worse. I can’t tell you how hard it was for me to hide it from you that summer. I was in pain almost constantly and it made it hard to even get out of bed some days. At one point I hoped that everything would be okay and I could come back to you but the first surgery didn’t have good news.”

  Scraping his hand down his face, Shane absorbed what she’d told him. Looking back, he could now see that she’d had good days and bad. Days when she “wasn’t in the mood” to make love and other times when she’d been what he would have labeled as “overemotional”, but her feisty, zest for life attitude had hidden most of her issues. If she hadn’t said anything he never would have guessed.

  Which didn’t say much for him as a boyfriend. Shit, how self-absorbed had he been to have missed the signs? She must have thought he was a narcissistic idiot and he wouldn’t argue with her.

  “You never said anything.”

  She finally turned to look at him, tears in her eyes. “I know. I was a young girl and embarrassed. I’d never been close enough to a guy to talk about, you know, female problems. Plus, I was scared. It felt like I was going every week for ultrasounds and check-ups. That growth on my ovary kept getting bigger and I couldn’t keep ignoring the doctor’s warnings anymore. Father was beside himself and Grandmother kept telling me to just have the surgery. I didn’t know what to do or who to talk to.”

  “The surgery? They wanted you to have a hysterectomy?”

  Shane had to wonder if he’d even known what that was when he was twenty-three. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to give her any sort of advice or opinion but he could have held her and told her it was all going to be okay. Not that he would have known whether it would be or not.

  “Yes, they’d tried other methods and as I said they didn’t like what they saw. But I was so scared. There were aftereffects, not the least of which was that I would never be able to get pregnant. I’d never have your baby, Shane.”

  Hanging his head, he rubbed the back of his neck more from shame than anything else. Obviously, he’d done a shitty job of showing her how much she meant to him, but then they hadn’t had long together. “I wouldn’t have cared about that, Arden. The only thing I would have cared about was keeping you healthy and alive. If that meant we didn’t have kids, so be it. Nothing means more to me than you do.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek and landed on her white blouse. “It’s easy to say but the reality is much different. I couldn’t rob you of your chance to be a father. I couldn’t do that to you.”

  His head jerked up and his brows pulled together. “Easy? You think it’s easy to say? That I’m just being glib to spare your feelings? Fuck, Arden.” He stood and strode to where she was standing by the window, his fingers clamping down on her arms. “Giving up on the idea of being a dad isn’t easy but compared to giving you up? That’s not even a contest. You win every time. Hell, we could have adopted or had a surrogate. Or we could have rescued half a dozen dogs and spoiled the hell out of them. It wouldn’t have been easy but we would have been together. Dammit, I loved you.”

  His hands dropped away and he paced the floor, his fingers scraping through his hair. “I know why you didn’t tell me but damn, I wish you would have. I wish you could have given me a chance to be more than a stupid, self-centered kid. We lost so many years, princess.”

  He couldn’t stop his own tears now and the last few words came out choked as his throat closed up. Struggling to drag air into his aching chest, he gripped the edge of the bar fighting the urge to smash his knuckles into the polished oak, creating one pain to help alleviate another greater one.

  “I had so many emotions to d
eal with, Shane, but mostly I was scared. Worst case, I had cancer and best case I might not lose all of my female organs but the chances of ever having a baby were low. I was terrified, literally shaking in my shoes every time I went to the doctor. I guess…I guess I just wasn’t sure you were ready to make that big of a decision about the rest of your life. The dreams we’d talked about were so different than what I would have asked you to embrace.”

  It came down to one fact. And it hurt.

  “You didn’t trust me.”

  Arden sucked in a breath and he knew he’d hit a bullseye.

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Wasn’t it? You didn’t trust me to stand by you when you were sick. You didn’t trust that I loved you more than those silly fantasies we had. And you sure as shit didn’t trust me with how much pain you were in every goddamn day that we were together. In fact, you went you of your way to make sure I didn’t know. So don’t say it wasn’t like that. That’s exactly how it was.”

  She shook her head, her lips trembling as more tears fell. “I wanted the best for you. I was protecting you from settling for a life that you wouldn’t be happy with.”

  “You thought I would come to resent you eventually?” he prompted.

  “Yes, and I couldn’t stand to see your love grow into hate.”

  He shrugged and wiped at his damp cheeks with the back of his hand. He was secure enough in his manhood to shed some tears. “I think I need some air, so let’s forget about breakfast.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Despite the pain he was in he was still coherent enough to hear the echoing pain in her voice. She was hurting as much as he was but he could barely deal with his own.

  “Somewhere. Anywhere. Maybe back to the lake from last night. Maybe to a bar or a strip joint. Hell, maybe I’ll hop a flight to Vegas. I just know I need some space.”

  “I’m so sorry, Shane.” Arden choked and she buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with sobs. “I just loved you so much. I never stopped. I swear I’ve thought about you so many times over the years. I wanted you to be happy even if it wasn’t with me.”