Besides, although he might want, he might trust, he might feel passion that threatened to melt his soul—it was no more than that. This thing he felt for Rachel wasn’t more than that. It couldn’t be.
The music dipped and Sam slid his hand lower on Rachel’s back. His fingers touched the soft curve of her hip as he braced her for the turn. A slight shiver ran through her slender frame, and Sam felt her quiver against him.
“Cold?” he asked. “I could find you a sweater.” But he made no move to step away from her.
And she made no move to leave the circle of his arms. “Sam,” she said softly, “I’m no hothouse flower.” Her lips moved against his shoulder, and he knew that she was smiling.
He pulled back, just to see that sweet smile that turned her eyes to stars. For long seconds she looked up, watching him, sharing the sunlight and moonlight and magic that was a part of her.
Marry me. The words filled his mind and his heart, and he knew that he couldn’t deny the truth any longer. Like it or not, he loved this woman. She was his heart, his all. He would go to hell and back a million times just for her.
Marry me.
Sam opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was not going to ask. He was not going to do something so foolish as to ask.
“Marry me, Rachel,” he whispered, letting the music drift past him, slowing their steps to a halt as he watched her...and waited. “Come stay with us. Come live in my house.”
For one brief moment, time moved in slow motion. Rachel leaned into him, her fingers tightened around his neck, he could swear those lovely lips were lifted for a kiss.
He almost thought he saw “yes” in her eyes.
And then, she stopped, frozen in place. His hands at her waist, Sam could feel her inhaling a long, deep breath. She stiffened, bit her lip. He knew the second the light fled her face. Still staring at him, she looked at him through eyes filled with want and need—and denial.
“Sam,” she said, her voice a low moan as she slipped her hands away from his shoulders and down to his forearms as if she meant to push him away. But she didn’t.
“I—oh, Sam,” she repeated sadly, leaning back against his still-locked arms as she shook her head.
“I—I’m sorry, Sam. About this—about Annie. Especially Annie. But I don’t think—” She bit her lip, shook her head again.
And her eyes that had been shining such a short time ago, began to mist over. Sam closed his eyes. Coward that he was, he couldn’t bear to think that he’d made her cry.
Silently he damned himself for even asking the question. It had clearly been a mistake. She had not wanted or expected this, and hadn’t he, only short moments ago, promised he wouldn’t push her? Hell, what a liar he was. He’d pushed her, tried to manipulate her, since the moment he’d stepped back into this town. He’d gotten into her face, into her space. He’d used her warm heart and her giving ways to get what he wanted from her. She had told him that she hadn’t met the right man, and yet here he was trying to bully her into feeling something for him. He was hurting her, and it was damn well going to stop now, no matter how much pain he had to go through himself.
As if from a distance, he heard the music stop, felt the shuffle of feet as people left the dance floor, yet he still stood there, trying to find his voice, to let Rachel know that he hadn’t intended to cause her distress. He heard the rising murmurs of the crowd, the footsteps that came closer, yet his eyes were locked with the lady’s, and neither of them seemed able to break away.
“Rachel!” The voice came from close by. An unfamiliar, male voice. Cries of “Hey, Don,” fell on Sam’s back.
Opening his eyes, he tensed, stepped closer to Rachel, turned so that his back was to the voice. “Rachel?” he coaxed, sliding his hands up her back.
Her anguished eyes widened, she shook her head again, ignoring the sounds emerging behind them. Rising on her toes, she lightly brushed his lips with her own, but Sam could feel goodbye in her kiss. “I can’t marry you, Sam,” she whispered. “I wish I could.”
“There you are, Rachel. Sweetheart, are you hard to find,” the deep male voice swept in, crushing the rest of her words.
Sam felt a slight tap on his shoulder. He turned toward the man whose attention was all on Rachel and looked into a smiling, congenial face. The man was handsome, sandy-haired and green-eyed, nearly as tall as Sam. He was nodding, holding out his hand to Rachel as if he clearly expected her to go with him.
“Rachel, angel, I’ve been looking all over for you.” The man’s voice was filled with genuine warmth, his soft drawl was tinged with caring. “I couldn’t wait that extra day, not another twenty-four hours. I had to see you now. Come with me?” he asked. “Honey, it’s been forever.”
And when Rachel looked up and stared into the man’s eyes, Sam saw the man’s glow of welcome. It was clear that the legendary Don Bowers loved this lady to distraction.
Sam recognized that he and not Don was the intruder here, the new kid on the block.
Carefully he released Rachel, gave her a curt nod of thanks for the dance and faded back into the crowd.
He walked away from the lady and closed his mind to the thoughts that threatened to make him turn and snatch her back.
Once again he had lost Rachel Allyn. The only difference was this time he knew what he’d lost. He knew at last that this feeling couldn’t die, it couldn’t be killed, it wouldn’t dissipate with time. For what he felt for Rachel was love. Definitely love, and he was scared as hell that it was the forever kind.
As he plunged into the crowd, located his children and rounded them up for the trip home, Annie tugged on his hand.
“Could we ask Rachel to come home with us tonight, Daddy? I want to tell her about all the things I did today.”
Sam looked down at the eager face turned up to his. Slowly he shook his head. “We can’t expect Rachel to come running whenever we want her to, pumpkin. She has her own life.”
“I know, Daddy. We talked. We did. I know Rachel’s an—umployee, but I thought maybe tonight... just this night...” Her eyes were wide, her voice soft and pleading.
Sam knelt down, he ran a hand over his daughter’s soft curls, took her hand in his. “I’m sorry, not tonight, Annie. Rachel won’t be coming tonight.”
And maybe not any other night, Sam thought, as he headed his children toward home. But he needn’t make Annie face that fact just yet. He’d take the pain alone tonight. One grieving Grayson was enough for now.
~ ~ ~
Rachel felt suddenly cold when Sam let go of her. She whirled, looking for him, but he’d already turned his back.
He was walking away without a backward glance.
And Don was standing beside her, smiling like a big, overeager puppy.
For a moment Rachel just stood there, swaying on her feet.
Sam had asked her to marry him. She had turned him down. She wanted to run away, to lick her wounds, to hide from the fact that Sam had seen her talking to Annie earlier and had done what he’d felt was necessary to secure his child’s happiness. Hadn’t he said that he would do anything, absolutely anything for his children? Did that include steeling himself to marry a woman, when he’d already decided that marriage was not for him?
Rachel couldn’t face that question and the inevitable answer. She’d grown up witnessing her own mother’s pain at being married to a man who didn’t love her. She knew that there was no happiness for anyone in that direction. And yet how could she deal with the fact that she had thrown away the chance to stay with Sam and his family forever? She couldn’t. Instead, she looked at Don who was chatting quietly beside her. Don had been a patient man who had waited for her a year. He deserved better than she was giving him this moment. He deserved her full attention.
Taking a deep breath, she managed to turn. She even managed to smile.
“Nice try, angel,” he said, leaning forward and brushing her forehead with his lips. “But if that isn’t the most pathetic smile I’ve ev
er seen, then I’m sadly in need of glasses. Want to tell good old Don all about it?”
The way he said “good old Don” made fresh tears start to build deep within Rachel. Don was such a kind man, such a wonderful man.
He was everything a woman should want in a man, but he didn’t have a low, caressing Texas drawl that stroked her senses with every word; he didn’t have eyes that reminded a woman of a bottomless, warm Caribbean sea; he didn’t make her feel that she would dry up and blow away if she couldn’t have him; he didn’t have three children that she loved beyond all belief. Don was a man any woman would be proud to love and yet...
“Oh, Don,” she said, looking up into his eyes and struggling to find her voice. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears.
“Uh-uh,” he whispered, linking her arm through his and starting to walk. “That’s not what I came to hear. There’s no way that I’m going to listen to that kind of talk.”
“But I should have called you before. I shouldn’t have waited for you to come and find me like this. You’ve been so patient, so caring, and I thought I might—I wanted so badly to give that back to you, but...”
The pressure of his fingers on her arm increased slightly, then let up. “You never made me any promises, Rachel. You told me last summer that you didn’t care enough. I’m an adult. I took the chance, I knew the risks.” His voice was forgiving, but weary. He swiped a hand over his jaw.
“So how long have you known that you loved this guy?” he asked suddenly.
Rachel stopped in her tracks.
“It shows?”
He shrugged, continued walking, slipping her hand down to rest in his. “Let’s just say that I study you a little closer than the average human being, Rachel. Your secret’s probably safe with me.”
She smiled at him then, a watery but genuine smile. This man was so special, so dear.
“If it’s any consolation, Don, I wish it was you that I was in love with. And I want—that is, I’m hoping that we still can be friends.”
At that he stopped walking. He turned to her and slowly shook his head. “You’d be a good friend, Rachel, but what I feel for you isn’t friendship. No man who loved you could ever settle for just being friends—so, no. Much as I’d like to please you and make you happy, no. That’s something I can’t do. At least not now while the feeling’s so strong. You understand?” he said gently, his voice strained, his hands just a shade too tight on her own.
Did she understand? How could she not, when she was remembering that only a short while ago Sam had suggested that they remain friends. That was what he wanted to offer her: friendship, desire, marriage, children. Everything, in fact, that she wanted—except love.
And like Don she knew now that friendship would never work between her and Sam. Sooner or later she’d slip. Sooner or later she’d cry. And Sam would see.
“I understand,” she agreed.
Don nodded. He lifted his hand and gestured toward the other side of the slowly clearing festival grounds. “You’d better go if you want to catch that guy. Looks like this place is clearing out. I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation. I was just hoping—well, you know what I was hoping.” He shrugged, pulled his hand from hers and shoved it in his pocket. “You’d better leave now. And, Rachel?”
She looked him straight in the eye. He deserved so much, but this was the best she could do.
“I appreciate your honesty, honey. You didn’t try to lie to me. Ever. You didn’t hide from the truth.”
Don’s words followed her as she walked away and went in search of Sam and Annie. He was wrong, so wrong. She’d spent a lifetime hiding from the truth. At fifteen she had hidden herself from Sam, never explaining to him why she had turned away from their friendship. If she had done that, if she had confessed, well—it wouldn’t have changed things for her, but maybe Sam would have been happier. She had hurt him by her silence, she knew that now. She wouldn’t do that again. He had been ripped apart by his divorce, scorned by a woman he’d loved. And while Rachel knew this was the end of things for her and Sam, she could not leave him thinking that she had rejected him, too.
Even if it cost her more pain than she could ever recover from, this time she would not sacrifice Sam’s ego for her own. He would know that her reason for turning him down was not that she didn’t want him, but that she wanted him too much to settle for less than his love.
She would make arrangements to see the children from time to time on their own, if Sam would allow it. She would tell him the truth, that only a fool who loved him would have said no to his marriage proposal, and then—well, she’d think about what happened next later.
There was only one thing that Rachel was sure of at this moment. She knew that there was only one man she had ever loved and ever would love. If there was to be no Sam in her future, there would be no wedding bells, either.
If she could not have Sam’s love, then Hal and Lily would never dance at her wedding.
Chapter Ten
At home Sam tossed and turned in the big queen-size bed, a bed that was way too big for a man who was going to spend the rest of his life sleeping alone.
The scrawny feather pillow lying beside him was a poor substitute for the woman he loved. It lay there, immobile, lumpy and cold. Swearing, he sat up in bed and scrunched the pillows behind him, staring out the darkened window.
This place was her, through and through, Sam thought, and he realized for the first time that he hadn’t bought this house with only Annie in mind. From the first moment he’d seen Rachel bent over that file cabinet, she’d filled his thoughts, she’d nourished his soul. He’d wanted her near him, around him. He’d wanted to please her. And those sweet-smelling roses Rachel had nurtured, the ones whose scent drifted through his window and filled his garden, were going to haunt him forever. He wanted them to haunt him. He wasn’t going to get rid of them just to make it easy to forget.
Sam leaned closer to the window, drinking in the rose-filled night, but the soft ring of the bedside phone cut his thoughts in two. Frowning, he reached for it.
“Sam?” Rachel’s voice broke the night when he finally managed to find the phone in the dark. “We need to talk.”
Like hell they would talk. He knew what she was going to say. She’d just come from her meeting with Don Bowers. Maybe she was with him still. Sam sucked in a breath, forcing himself not to think about Rachel cuddled up to that green-eyed, handsome man.
He sighed, knowing this moment was unavoidable. Somehow, sometime, she was going to walk down the aisle with a man who wasn’t Sam Grayson. Sooner or later he’d have to wake up to that fact. “All right, we have to talk,” he agreed. “But the kids are in bed. I can’t leave them alone.”
“No. No, of course you can’t.” Her voice whispered over his bare skin. “Did you think I’d ask that? I’ll be there, Sam. Soon.”
Too soon. Much too soon. He ached for her, and yet he didn’t want her here at night, in the shadows, in the darkness that would tempt him to touch her. He wanted the blazing, brain-numbing, eye-opening sunlight full in his face. He wanted a glare that would blind him to all the sweet and lovely things that she was. But he could see her point in making this a night visit. If she was tendering her resignation, she wouldn’t want the children to have to hear—and neither would he.
“I’ll leave the porch light on,” he agreed, hanging up and reaching for his jeans.
Ten minutes later he stood there in the yellow glow of the outside light, watching her pull up in that cute little red car of hers.
She climbed out, still wearing that red-and-white number she’d had on earlier today, the one that did mean and terrible things to his sanity. Sam focused his attention on her face, but that was no better. He’d always been a sucker for big gray eyes and kiss-me-now-please lips, at least when they were Rachel’s eyes and Rachel’s lips.
Unable to stand there and watch her walk to him, he met her halfway, outside the perimeter of the ligh
t.
“I want you to know that I’m sorry for everything I conned you into, Rachel,” he began, his voice rough and gravelly. “You’ll be wanting to go now. I’ve heard all about Don Bowers, and it’s ten kinds of obvious that he’s a great guy who’s absolutely in love with you.”
Rachel raised her chin. She looked directly into his eyes. Sam wanted to groan. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Don’s a very nice man.”
“Then you’ll be marrying him,” he said. “I expect that’s true, and you don’t have to worry about the kids. I’ve heard that Cynthia Watts’s niece is looking for a job. I understand that you’ll want to be leaving right away, that Don has job-related commitments he’ll need to get back to.”
He couldn’t believe he was saying this, that he was talking to her as if they were discussing the week’s grocery list.
~ ~ ~
Rachel looked into Sam’s eyes, but the darkness hid his expression from her. His voice, however, was as clipped and cold as Alaska in winter. He couldn’t be making his point more clear. If she had ever harbored any doubts about the fact that Sam didn’t love her the way a man loved a woman, they were dying, but she couldn’t give in to her grief right now. She had promised herself that she was done with hiding from the truth. She wanted to be honest with Sam.
But his words, his generosity in stepping away in an attempt to make things easier for her, cut deeper than she had imagined she could be cut.
“Would you stop being so darn nice to me, Sam? Would you just once, please, not make me feel like you’re trying to help me? Wasn’t that what you told Donna years ago, what I heard you say, that I was poor and poverty-stricken and that I needed your help?”
The words sounded childish to Rachel’s ears. They sounded just the same way they had many years ago.
Instantly Sam’s expression melted. He drew her back into the light. He placed his arms about her, warming her with his body. “Did I say that, Rachel? If I did, I didn’t mean it to hurt you. I only meant that I wanted to help you. I’ll always want to help you.”
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