The Surprise of a Lifetime

by Emilie Richards

  She released a long breath, as if she had been holding it and waiting for something. But for what? He didn’t know. For a moment he wished he was as self-centered and aggres­sive as the world assumed all rock musicians were. She was confused, but she was also as attracted to him as he was to her. If he pushed her…

  “Make yourself comfortable.” He turned away before she could see the temptation in his eyes, and went to get the champagne.

  * * *

  She was amazed how many questions she had stored up to ask Devin. By the second glass of champagne, they were both more relaxed. Conversation flowed along with the bubbly. Robin found herself telling him all sorts of things. About high-school boyfriends, the way that Duke, her childhood cocker spaniel, had kidnapped her Raggedy Ann doll to sleep with every night, the trip to Wyoming she and Nicholas would make at Christmas to visit her parents, who had settled there two years before.

  “They want us to come and live with them,” she said.

  “Have you considered it?”

  “They’re three hours from an airport. I think it would be harder for you to come and visit Nicholas.”

  “It might be.”

  “I don’t want that.”

  He smiled. His fingers dangled just over her shoulder. He dangled them a little lower and made contact with her sweater. “I have a house in the Rockies, near Colorado Springs. Did you know that?”

  The casual touch seemed to change everything again. She didn’t look at him. “I think I might have heard that somewhere.” Actually, she knew all about the house. She had even seen a photograph in an old Architectural Digest. It was breathtakingly contemporary, cedar and glass, with enough square footage to house everyone Devin had ever met. Somehow she hadn’t been able to imagine the Devin she knew living there, and that had frightened her.

  “I’ve been staying there when I can.”

  “Do you think of it as home?”

  “No, I think of home as Farnham Falls.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you ever wonder why I bought the farmhouse from Sarah?”

  She nodded. She had wondered about that frequently.

  “The night Nicholas was born, I was going back there to live for a while. I needed a place where no one would dis­turb me, a place where I could work on something com­pletely new. I had planned to hole up there for a month or so and see what I could do with my idea.”

  “Well, things didn’t quite work out the way you intended, did they?” She glanced back up at him. He was smiling.

  “I think of Nicholas as a new project. A better one than I was planning.”

  “What were you planning?”

  “Well, it’s more than a plan at this point. I’m working on a musical. Hopefully for Broadway.”

  “Really?” She was amazed. She knew he was extraordi­narily talented. She just hadn’t realized how far that talent extended.

  “Really. It’s my story, and the songs are mine, but I’ve teamed up with someone else who’s writing the lyrics. It’s good, Robin. I don’t know if it’s good enough, but it’s good. There’s already interest. Quite a bit of it.”

  “But that’s great. Is that why you’ve cut back on perform­ing?”

  “I want to stop performing eventually, or at least nearly stop. I really love the writing best, and I don’t like what per­forming does to my life.”

  “But why Farnham Falls? You could have chosen a lot more exotic locales to hole up and work, Devin.”

  “The show’s called ‘Heartland.’ It’s about the way the heartland was before all the family farms began to disappear. For a rock opera, it’s disgustingly nostalgic and sentimen­tal.” He grinned. “The main musical motif is a lullaby that my mother used to sing to me.”

  She had often heard him sing an unusual lullaby to Nich­olas. She knew the song he must mean.

  He had sung it to her when he was carrying her to the car the night he’d rescued her.

  Her throat closed, and she swallowed. She was touched that she and Nicholas had somehow shared in this. “So that’s why you were coming home.”

  “Part of the reason. I wanted to reconnect with myself, and Farnham Falls seemed like the right place to do that. I needed to be among people who believed all the things I’d been taught to believe as a boy. I needed to remem­ber…good things. And there was a woman living in Farn­ham Falls, someone I’d met some months before, who I was hoping to see again. One afternoon I was going to wander into the newspaper office where she worked, look around a little, ask a few questions, find out her name. And if she was there, I was hoping she might just consider getting to know me a little better. Maybe have a conversation like this one.”

  She supposed her heart was in her eyes. “Please… If that’s not true…”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you. I’m never going to lie to you, Robin. Not about anything.”

  She didn’t think Devin would lie to her. But she did think he might lie to himself. Perhaps he had thought of her. She had certainly thought of him as their baby had grown inside her. But she didn’t believe Devin’s thoughts had been anything more than memories of a wonderful night when a man and a woman had come together to soothe each other’s pain.

  Perhaps Devin had planned to look for her. But Robin doubted that he’d had anything in mind except a brief re­newal of their acquaintance. In the light of day, she would have proved to be exactly what she was. A Midwestern woman working at a small, inconsequential newspaper. Pretty enough, intelligent enough, but not what a man like Devin was used to. She was proud of herself. She had no desire to be anyone else. But she was also realistic.

  She felt his hand settle on her shoulder. “You’re home­sick, or you were,” she said. “Sometimes home looks better than it really is. Don’t the rooms in the farmhouse seem smaller than they did to you as a boy? That’s how life in Farnham Falls would seem to you if you had to live there day after day.”

  He nodded, but his eyes questioned her. She could see he didn’t understand.

  “You were burned out,” she said. “Maybe you still are. But that doesn’t mean that the things that might help you re­cover and go on are the things you really want and need for the rest of your life.”

  He stroked her neck with his fingertips. “Doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t plan to live in Farnham Falls day after day. That doesn’t mean I can’t take what’s important with me when I go.”

  She stopped pretending that they were talking in the ab­stract. “Look at me, Devin. I’m not glamorous or exciting. Farnham Falls might be too small for me, but living your life would overwhelm me. I want stability. Roots. I want the people I love around me, not strangers who come and go. That’s what I want for Nicholas, too.”

  “Am I one of the people you love? One of the people you want around you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Because we’re not at all the same. We aren’t going to be able to fit our lives together.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  She couldn’t answer. His hand was cupping her cheek. Her eyes were gazing into the depths of his. Everything she’d said was true. She thought she believed it deep in her heart. But she couldn’t answer, because the answer seemed too final.

  “You’re not sure,” he said. “Somewhere inside you there’s a voice telling you that with a little compromise, a little dis­cussion, we can work out anything. We aren’t so far apart. And there are a thousand places in between where we could be happy together.”

  It was time to pull away. This was too intimate, exactly what they had to avoid. But Robin couldn’t move. She was caught by the look in his eyes, by a deep loneliness that he didn’t often let her see, and by something else. Hope? She didn’t know. Did it really matter so much to Devin that they find the compromise that would let them live their lives to­gether?

  She saw that he was going to kiss her. Loneliness and hope had warred, and the result was this. She saw that she could pull away from him now, th
at she could stop this be­fore it started again. He had not brought her here to seduce her. At least, not consciously.

  She willed herself to move away. This would complicate a relationship already so complex it might never be re­solved.

  Instead, her hands lifted to his hair, and she sighed. Re­lief filled her when he kissed her, because now there was no room for doubt or protest. Instead she was suffused with de­sire. The part of her that still believed all things were pos­sible kindled into flame.

  “Just tell me to stop,” he whispered against her lips.

  “Don’t. Don’t stop.” She was afraid he might. He hesi­tated, giving them both seconds to reconsider. But she re­alized she didn’t want those seconds. She didn’t know what the future held for them. She didn’t want to know. She just knew that she needed Devin now. She didn’t believe the things he’d said, but she wanted to. She needed to believe, because with his lips on hers, she couldn’t bear to let him go. Not ever. Not even if it was best for them all.

  “I love you,” he said. “Don’t ever tell yourself I don’t. And don’t tell me it’s not enough. We can make it enough.” He kissed her again. Harder and more intimately. She felt his tongue stroking hers, his hand sliding up her midriff.

  Her bra gave way under his capable fingers, and she felt his palm against her breast. Pleasure shot through her, plea­sure more intense than anything she’d ever experienced. It had been more than a year and a half since they’d made love the first time, but she remembered every sensation from that night. And this was better.

  Because she loved him, too.

  Her sweater was snowflake white against the rug at their feet. His blue wool shirt joined it.

  She had forgotten how sweet this was, how perfect to have skin against skin, her breasts pressing and molding themselves to the hard contours of his chest. She had for­gotten the feel of his lips at her breasts, the erotic entice­ment of a man suckling where her son still fed. She had forgotten how his muscles rippled under her fingertips, the smooth, cool expanse of his skin, the silky brown hair on his chest.

  Her skirt drifted to the floor with her stockings. She helped him slide down his pants until they were gone, as well. She saw how ready he was to take her; that despite his promise of patience, he had none to promise. He held out his hand, and they walked to the bedroom. Twilight filtered through heavy drapes, but it wasn’t enough. She stopped be­side the bed to turn on the lamp. She wanted to see him as he made love to her, wanted to remember every move, every expression.

  He embraced her, his body lean and hard against hers. He was fully aroused, but he didn’t hurry her. He stood with his arms around her and kissed her as if they had the rest of their lives to take their pleasure.

  She was the one who pulled back the covers, who slid be­tween them and opened her arms to him. She had made love to him only once. He had been a stranger that night. Now, he was not.

  “There is nothing that can come between us unless you let it,” he said, as he rose over her.

  As he sank into her, she wondered if he was right. In that moment there were only the two of them and their plea­sure. And nothing seemed impossible.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Devin didn’t change a diaper exactly the way Robin did, but he got the job done. She watched him fasten the last tab and pull Nicholas’s pajamas up to cover it. Devin wasn’t in pajamas himself. He was wearing unsnapped jeans and a flannel shirt he hadn’t buttoned when he’d sprung out of bed to see why their son was crying.

  Robin knew she should have stayed in bed herself. The luxury of having someone else get up with Nicholas was be­yond price. But she had gotten up. Not because she didn’t trust Devin to handle Nicholas, but because she liked to watch him with his son.

  They seemed very much like a real family.

  “Go warm up the bed again,” Devin told her. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Good luck.” She blew Nicholas a kiss and followed Devin’s suggestion. Back in her bedroom, she stripped off her robe and snuggled deep under the covers, shivering a little at the feel of the cool fabric against her bare skin. Nowadays the bed seemed huge to her when Devin wasn’t in it. And there were long periods of time when he wasn’t. Since the night they had become lovers again, he visited more often, and he stayed at the house with her when he did. But his commitments still kept him away for long stretches of time. Each time he left, she and Nicholas waited impatiently for his return.

  Devin came back and stripped off his makeshift pajamas. He slid in beside her and opened his arms. “He was already falling back to sleep before I closed the door.”

  “New tooth.” Robin nestled against Devin’s shoulder and sighed as he wrapped his arms around her.

  “It’s hard to believe that he’s going to be a year old to­morrow.”

  “I know. I can’t believe the first year of his life has already gone by.”

  “I feel like I missed too much of it.”

  “Well, you were Johnny-on-the-spot the night he was born.”

  “No blizzard in sight for tomorrow. High thirties and sun­shine.”

  “I wish my parents could be here for his party.”

  He paused before answering. “I’d like to meet them.”

  Robin sighed. “I’d like that, too. But they don’t under­stand about us, Devin.”

  “Neither do I.”

  She could feel sleep slipping away from her. Lately Devin had been the soul of patience, rarely mentioning the future. But she knew their part-time relationship weighed heavily on him. It weighed heavily on her, too. She was the only obstacle to giving her son a full-time father.

  She loved Devin Fitzgerald. That wasn’t in question and hadn’t been for a long time. And she believed Devin when he said that he loved her. But she still didn’t know if he loved her the way a woman deserved to be loved—for her­self alone. He loved his son’s mother. He loved the fact that they were a family. But she didn’t know if that kind of com­mitment would hold up under the bright lights of Devin’s life.

  Right now she and Nicholas were a safe harbor in the stormy sea of rock and roll. But once they were thrown into it, would they keep their heads above water? Or would they sink together?

  Would she lose everything again?

  “Are you really unhappy with things the way they are?” she asked, when it was clear to her that he wasn’t falling asleep, either.

  “I love being with you and Nicholas. But I miss you when I’m not.”

  “Well, we miss you, too. But you’ve been able to come more often. That’s been wonderful.”

  “It’s not easy, Robin. The more frequently I disappear, the more suspicious it looks. And the harder it is on everybody who depends on me.”

  She had never thought about that. There were probably a lot of people who depended on Devin for their livelihood. He was a big business.

  She had never thought about something else, either. Now she wondered how she could have overlooked it. “Is it dangerous for you to come here? I remember you had a bodyguard in Cleveland.”

  “I take precautions more to avoid detection than for safety reasons.”

  “I haven’t been fair to you, have I? I’ve been expecting you to keep this up indefinitely.”

  “I don’t want to keep it up. I’m tired. I want you and Nicholas with me, someplace where we can spend all or al­most all our nights together. Someplace where I can be sure you’re both safe and happy.”

  “Where? Manhattan? Beverly Hills? Your rustic little es­tate in Colorado?” Despite herself, her voice was heavy with distaste.

  He rubbed the small of her back. “No. Someplace we choose together. I don’t own any property that I care about except this house. We could find a community where we feel at home. A good place to raise our family. If you were just willing to look.”

  “And if we couldn’t? What if we found we couldn’t make a life together? It would be too late to turn back then, wouldn’t it? We couldn’t go back to this.”<
br />
  “I know you’re afraid. But sometimes people have to move on. Even if it means taking risks.”

  She remembered that Judy had said nearly the same thing to her. Making sure she had nothing to lose was no way to deal with the future. But she had so much to lose. Devin and even Nicholas.

  “Do you know that you were all relaxed against me, and now you’re not?” Devin spread his fingers against her back. His thumb began to make slow circles at the base of her spine. “You’re stiff with fear. It isn’t going to matter how many times I tell you that we can make this work, is it? You’re still afraid you’re going to lose something precious.”

  When she didn’t answer he turned her onto her back and began to kiss her. There was more than one way to make her relax. She clung to him and kissed him back. They had made love before falling asleep tonight, but now she was ravenous. She wanted Devin inside her, driving out her fears. She knew the time to make a decision was at hand, but she didn’t want to make it now. She wanted to forget that things couldn’t always stay this way. She wanted to for­get that someday he might not be here to make love to her when she needed him.

  * * *

  “Happy Birthday to you…” Devin started the familiar song, and Robin and Judy took it up quickly.

  Nicholas beamed at the sudden burst of music from the people he loved most in the world. He clapped his hands, then his eyes widened as Robin walked toward him with his birthday cake. She and Devin had decided on a sparkler in­stead of a candle. A candle didn’t seem nearly special enough for their son’s first birthday party.

  Nicholas was entranced until the sparkler went out. Then he frowned and pointed. “Da!”

  “Sorry, kiddo, I can’t bring it back. But I bet you’ll like what was under it.” Devin took the cake out of Robin’s hands after she had removed the spent sparkler and set it on Nicholas’s high-chair tray. “Dig in.”