by Joss Wood
Sadie managed a tremulous smile. “Unfortunately, he’s not my man, Beth. Not anymore.”
“Oh, honey, he really is.” Beth reached out and Sadie felt arms around her, heard the clear but heartfelt apology Beth spoke in her ear. “Forgive me?”
Sadie, her throat clogged with tears, just nodded. Beth tugged her into the hallway and Sadie blinked to clear her vision. When she looked at Beth, her eyes were wet.
“So does this mean I’m not fired?” Beth asked, keeping their hands linked.
Sadie managed a quick, small smile. “Well, not today.”
* * *
I don’t have an angle! And I’m sleeping with you because I’m crazy about you. I can’t stop thinking about you. Hell, I think I’m in love with you!
Carrick, giving up on work, swiveled around in his chair. He couldn’t concentrate because Sadie’s words were bouncing around his brain.
He had a hangover from hell because he’d tucked into a bottle of twelve-year-old whiskey from his father’s famous, rare and expensive collection. He refused to feel guilty for throwing it down his throat because having his heart broken again should be accompanied by the soothing taste of rare, expensive whiskey.
But unfortunately, there was no difference in rotgut liquor and smooth whiskey the day after. They both made him feel like someone was taking a sledgehammer to his brain.
Crazy about you, think I’m in love with you, I trusted you, but you won’t trust me.
Carrick placed his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor. Seeing a paper clip lying on the carpet, he picked it up and slowly unbent the wire.
He had refused to explain. He had asked her to make up her own mind about him. And he believed they’d turned a corner, that she saw him clearly. She’d trusted her intuition, trusted him to show her who he really was and she’d believed...
He hadn’t.
What if what she was saying was true? What if she really wasn’t going back to Paris? What if, instead of reacting, he’d sought to understand first and judge later?
First things first, he needed to know whether Sadie was leaving Boston, leaving him. He’d call Beth, get this straightened out...
Carrick sat up and reached for his phone, wondering if he still had his sister-in-law’s number. He scrolled through his contacts. One call and he could have this straightened out...
But if he called Beth, he would be going through an intermediary, taking her word above Sadie’s. If they had a chance to make this work, make them work, then he had to deal with Sadie. He had to work this out with her.
Calling Beth was the easy way out and he was still ducking the issue. The fundamental problem was trust. He either trusted Sadie...
Or he didn’t.
He’d asked her to believe what he’d shown her; what if he did the same for her? What if he looked at her words and actions and made up his own mind, just as he’d asked her to do? Yeah, unfortunately, the boot didn’t fit so easily when he shoved it onto his own foot.
Putting his phone back down on his desk, he thought back over the past few weeks and forced himself to carefully examine all their interactions. Sadie had never, not once, lied to him. She worked long hours, prepared professional updates, kept their working life separate from their personal relationship. She’d told him about the baby; she hadn’t hidden her pregnancy from him. She’d agreed they’d raise their child together; she’d told him she wanted her child to have as much of a full-time dad as he could manage to be.
She hadn’t acted like she wanted to go back to Paris. In fact, the opposite was true. Her words, her innate affection and the way she looked at him told him that she was prepared, despite her lousy marriage, to take a chance on him.
And that she’d trusted him not to hurt her...
But he had hurt her and done it well. He’d seen it in her pale face, her tear-stained eyes, in her tight mouth. He’d wounded her and he wanted to kick his own ass. Despite the emotional abuse she’d experienced in her marriage, then the betrayal of her friends and family not believing her, she’d opened herself up to him, trusting him to have her back.
She’d been brave, but at the first little setback, he’d folded like a cheap pack of cards.
God, he couldn’t be more ashamed of himself if he tried.
Hearing the tap on his door, he slowly turned around and saw Ronan in the doorway, his expression concerned.
“What’s up?” he asked his brother, his tone curt.
“Marsha’s canceled your meetings and is holding your calls. She’s worried because the last time you cut yourself off so completely, Tanna had been in an accident.”
That was the problem with an assistant who’d worked for him for so long. She knew him better than he knew himself. And his brother had the worst timing ever.
Carrick frowned at him. “And you didn’t think that maybe I needed some time alone?”
Ronan came inside and closed the door. “But what you want and what you need are two totally separate things.”
Right now Carrick needed to find Sadie, not sit through a lecture from his brother. They needed to work this out. And yes, that would include groveling on his part. He’d do what he’d have to do to make this right...
“I know what I need, Ronan.”
“No, Carrick, you think you know. You think you want to be alone, to protect yourself from hurt, from having another woman leaving you. I hate to tell you this, but you can’t control anyone’s actions. People leave, people die and people mess up.”
Carrick tipped his head to the side, thinking this was the most emotion he’d heard from Ronan in a long, long time. Wanting to see where this went, even if it meant delaying seeing Sadie, he gestured for him to keep speaking.
“You and Sadie ended it, didn’t you? Or, to be more precise, you did.”
Carrick shrugged, holding his brother’s eye. He just nodded and noticed the frustration cross his brother’s face. “She was your one, Carrick, the person meant for you. How could you not see that?”
Wow. Interesting that Ronan had noticed. “How do you know?”
“Because I know true love when I see it, Carrick! I lived it, I had it and I recognize it. She is your other half, the person you are supposed to be with.”
“I thought the same with Tamlyn,” Carrick said, knowing his feelings for Sadie couldn’t be compared to what he felt for his ex. It was like comparing a dull beige with alizarin crimson, milk with cream, cut glass shards with diamonds.
But if his comment kept Ro talking...
“You don’t only get one person to love and you love people differently, at different times of your life. You loved Tamlyn, but you’re a different person now from the person who loved her. You don’t only get one shot at marriage and love, Carrick.”
Carrick held his brother’s gaze, hiding his smile as Ronan walked into a trap of his own making. “I hear you, Ronan, I do.”
Ronan released a sigh. “So you are going to sort out this mess with Sadie?”
“I am. But before I do, can I ask you one question?”
Ronan nodded, then shrugged. “Sure.”
“Why is there one set of rules for me, but not for you? If I get to take another shot at a relationship, why can’t you?”
Ronan’s astonishment would, Carrick decided, always remain with him.
* * *
Since leaving Beth’s a few hours before, and not being ready to return to her office at Murphy’s—Sadie knew it would be weeks, maybe months, before she could face Carrick with equanimity again—she returned to her rented apartment and, sitting on the sofa with her laptop on the table in front of her, flipped through the scanned images of various documents she’d found at the Virginia Museum of Art and Culture.
If she didn’t focus on work, she’d be consumed by thoughts of Carrick and she might, just might, be tempted to head b
ack to Murphy’s to beg him to believe her. She couldn’t allow herself to do that.
Love, and trust, when not given freely, meant nothing at all.
So she’d buckle down. She’d do her job and after she submitted her final report she wouldn’t have to see or talk to Carrick again. Not for a few months anyway. She had time before she had to introduce him to his child.
Maybe by then, her heart would’ve healed.
Ignoring that sharp pain in her chest, she forced herself to read the entries of a diary written by one of Winslow Homer’s friends, concentrating on the spidery handwriting, looking for words that might be a reference to Homer, art or paintings. She was a third of the way through an entry when a passage caught her eye...
I watched Winslow work on the third of a series of paintings today detailing the lives of slave women on a plantation just south of here. He stood in the fields and watched the two children play, sketching rapidly. The detail took my breath away...the torn pocket on the girl child’s pinafore, the faint scar above the boy’s eyebrow...
Wait...
Sadie felt the thump of excitement, the taste of a breakthrough in her mouth. Scrabbling for a folder she’d left on the floor, she yanked it open, not caring when the papers inside fluttered to the ground. She didn’t care about the documents; she needed the photographic reprint she’d made of the painting...
Sadie turned the photograph to the light coming from the lamp and—yes! Sadie punched the air with her fist.
The girl’s pocket was torn; the boy did have a scar over his eyebrow...she had proof! It wasn’t a solid provenance, but she was getting there and it was a lot more than she’d had before.
Sadie heard the knock on her door and, still holding the photograph, she walked into the small hallway to yank open the door.
The first thing she saw was a massive bunch of flowers and she instantly recognized the hand that held them. If Carrick thought she could be bribed by a bunch of flowers as an apology, he was in for a rude shock.
She pushed the flowers away to look up into his face, her Homer discovery instantly forgotten. He looked older than he had yesterday, drawn and wan. It was obvious that his night had been as horrible as hers but she wasn’t angelic enough to feel bad about that.
He deserved to feel like an ass because he’d acted like one.
“What do you want?” she demanded, folding her arms and sending him a belligerent look.
He tried to push the flowers toward her, but she just narrowed her eyes. His hand, and the arrangement, dropped to his side. “Can I come in?”
“What’s the point?”
Carrick looked like he was trying to hold on to his temper. “The point is that I have things to say and I’d prefer not to say them in the hallway.”
Sadie just lifted her eyebrows and planted her feet. “I’d prefer you not to have acted like an ass, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
Carrick looked up to the ceiling and sighed. “I should’ve realized this wouldn’t be easy.”
Sadie was tired, she was upset and she didn’t have the energy to face the man who couldn’t give her what she wanted. “Carrick, so far today I’ve spoken to Beth and to my parents. Neither conversation was easy. I’m upset and emotional and tired. Please just go.”
“No.”
Carrick then lifted his arms and the flowers flew past her head. Sadie turned and watched them land next to the coffee table, scattering leaves and petals on the beige carpet. “Did that make you feel better?” she asked the scowling Carrick.
“No, but this will.” Carrick gripped her hips, pulled her into him and covered her lips with his.
Sadie didn’t even try to resist. Her anger dissipated as his tongue twirled around hers, as he placed his hand behind her head to hold her still. Kissing Carrick was all she wanted to do for the rest of her life, but she couldn’t do it on and off, on a friends-with-benefits basis. She needed his love, his trust, his commitment. She needed what he didn’t have to give.
Sadie pushed her hands against his chest and Carrick immediately released her. Walking back into her apartment, Sadie bit down on her bottom lip and stared at him, feeling like her heart was being ripped in two. “I can’t do this, Carrick.”
“Why not?”
“Because I need love, I need your trust, I need...everything.”
Carrick nodded. “Okay.”
He was too quick to agree, too fast off the line. “That wasn’t how you felt last night.”
Carrick nodded, and Sadie realized that his eyes were a shade of green she’d never seen before. It was like there was a gold flame burning behind his irises, allowing them to glow. “As you pointed out, last night I was an ass. Today I hope I am a little less of an ass.”
“Stop talking in riddles and say what you came to say,” Sadie snapped.
Carrick nodded, sat down on the edge of the closest chair and crossed one ankle over his knee. He sent her a steady look, a look that was full of—dare she believe it?—love.
“When I told Tamlyn I wanted a divorce, she went a little nuts. What I thought would be an amicable split turned into a living nightmare. She didn’t want to be married to me, but she sure as hell didn’t want me leaving her, either. And she wanted to punish me. She went after my house, the art, the company. It was all stipulated in the prenup so she couldn’t touch any of it. Stories started appearing in the press and they always occurred within a few days of a meeting with our lawyers...and always when she didn’t get her way.”
Carrick was explaining his past; he was opening up. Sadie dropped to the nearest chair, scared to say anything in case he stopped talking.
“The more she lost, the more she wanted to hurt me. I had threatening calls, threatening text messages. Believe it or not, she egged my house. She eventually calmed down when I threatened her with a restraining order. But the rumors kept on coming. My siblings wanted me to take her on about what she was saying, but I refused to let them. People would either believe her or me and I sure as hell wasn’t going to beg them to believe me.
“I didn’t care what anyone thought until you came along,” Carrick added, his voice low and his words saturated with emotion. “I expected you to trust me without explanation, but I couldn’t do the same for you. So with your permission, I’m going to try that conversation from yesterday again...”
Sadie tipped her head, keeping her fingers tightly knotted.
“Sadie, I heard you might be going back to Paris. Is that true?”
Sadie shook her head. “No. It’s a long story why Beth thought it important to renew my lease instead of canceling it as I asked her to do, but no, I’m staying in Boston. One of my to-do items is finding an apartment or home in Boston, preferably a two-bedroom place so I can have a nursery.”
The tension seeped out of Carrick as he played with the laces on his shoe. “I know of a pretty big house where you could have your choice of bedrooms for a nursery.”
Sadie pretended to misunderstand him. “Really, where?”
He sent her a you’re-messing-with-me look. “In Beacon Hill. Unfortunately, the offer comes with a couple of provisos. You’d have to share my bed, and I’d expect to put my ring on your finger at some point.”
Sadie leaned forward, her arms on her thighs. It was all she wanted, but it wasn’t enough. “Are you offering to marry me because I need a place to stay or because I’m having your child?”
“I want to marry you because I can’t imagine not marrying you, not living with you, not having you as the center of my life. I want you to live with me because I can’t imagine my life without you in it. I’m crazy mad in love with you, Dr. Slade.”
Sadie wanted to believe him; she really did. She wanted to fall into the hope blooming in her chest, to trust what he was telling her was the truth. But she was scared, so scared of being disappointed by him again.
>
“You and I, we’re a team, Sades. I messed up yesterday big-time, but I am asking you one more time to trust in me, to trust in us. When you fall down, I’ll pick you up. When somebody comes for you, I want to be the one who stands between you and the world. When you have a bad day, I want to be the one to give you a good night. I’ll be there, Sadie, every step of the way. I promise to love you through everything life throws at us.”
Sadie felt that hard layer of ice surrounding her heart crack and fall away, felt her stomach slip out of its tangled knot. Then Carrick held out his hand, and Sadie placed hers in his, emotion burning as she finally, finally realized she was home. Wherever Carrick was. She’d never be alone again.
She was, as he said, part of a team.
Carrick’s hand tightened around hers and he gave her a yank, pulling her into his arms. Scooping her up to sit on his lap, her legs straddling his thighs, he held her face and stared deeply into her eyes. “I love you, sweetheart. I’m so sorry I disappointed you. Please give me, give us, another chance.”
Sadie traced his eyebrow with one finger. “I love you, too.”
“That’s good to hear, but that’s still not a yes on my let’s-give-us-another-chance question,” Carrick said, his voice gentle. “I need to know, Sades.”
“Yes, Carrick. To everything.”
Carrick’s shoulders slumped and Sadie felt the last of his tension leave his body. Then he picked up her hand and tugged. Sadie looked down and saw she was still holding the printout of the painting and she remembered her fantastic news. “Carrick, I found something! It’s amazing news... Homer definitely painted this—”
Carrick placed his hand over her mouth, his eyes filled with joy. “Sweetheart, I realize I am always going to have to compete with art for your attention, but right now, can I not?” His hands dropped to the edges of her sweater and he slowly, deliberately pulled it up her body. “You, Sadie Slade, are my greatest treasure, my best canvas, my favorite piece of art. And I intend to spend the next sixty years reminding you of that every damn day.”
