You would think that by now, Kelsey thought, no part of her still believed in fairy tales. All that “finding the right man” and “living happily ever after” really was a fairy tale.
Okay, her parents had a wonderful marriage, but that was rare and the result of luck more than anything else. Luck that her brothers had scared off not one, not two, but three nannies in relatively short order, throwing her father into a state of panic that had him virtually trolling for nannies. Luck that he’d brought Mike to a neighborhood party instead of sending him off on his own because it was so close by. Luck that her mother had picked that particular party to entertain and work her magic. And even more luck that her mother had been a starving student having progressively more and more trouble making ends meet.
If any of that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t have happened and there wouldn’t have been this wonderful, long-term marriage to look back on as part of her background.
Maybe, Kelsey thought, tossing a black pencil skirt into the suitcase laying open on her bed, if her parents had been divorced, she wouldn’t have grown up looking at life through rose-colored glasses. She wouldn’t have seen marriage as a haven. Moreover, she would have seen the world with all its warts and blemishes and known that losing her heart to a man was a huge mistake.
That jerk who’d said that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, she thought resentfully, flinging in several pairs of underwear. The “lost” part hurt like hell.
Damn it, tears meshed into her lashes, sliding down her cheeks.
Annoyed, Kelsey stopped flinging clothes and wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. He wasn’t worth them.
If he wasn’t worth the tears, there wouldn’t have been any tears. She certainly wouldn’t be shedding them now.
Her head ached. She wasn’t making any sense anymore.
God, but she felt like exploding. If she didn’t vent soon—
Kelsey grabbed the book she kept on her nightstand in hopes of eventually finishing it and flung it as hard as she could against the opposite wall. The noise that was made when it made contact with the wall wasn’t nearly loud enough.
Her frustration didn’t abate, even an iota.
She needed something heavier, something more substantial to throw, she thought angrily. Like a stack of dishes, one by one.
Or Morgan.
Kelsey took in a deep, cleansing breath and then let it out slowly. It helped. For approximately five seconds. So she took another. Just as the doorbell rang.
She glared toward the front of the house. Now what?
The doorbell rang a second time. Then a third. No sooner had the sound of insistent chimes died away than the knocking started. The knocking soon gave way to pounding. Hard pounding that threatened to bring down her front door.
The scenario was all too familiar. A couple of months ago, she’d been the one pounding on Morgan’s door. Was this Morgan? Had he suddenly come around?
Stop it, Kelsey, she thought. It’s not Morgan. It’s probably just some kid, selling subscriptions for his school.
She wouldn’t be here to read any magazines.
Deciding to ignore whoever was out there, she went back to packing. For all of ninety seconds.
There was no way to ignore the pounding as it grew increasingly louder. Whoever was out there must have huge, hard fists. It sounded as if he could go on pounding indefinitely.
Marching out of the bedroom, she crossed to the front door and swung it open. “I’m not interested!” she yelled and then froze.
It wasn’t someone selling subscriptions.
It was Morgan.
“Well, I am!” he shouted back at her. His eyes blazed as they swept over her. “Don’t you know any better than to open your door without looking to see who it is?” he demanded.
His anger made her forget what he’d first shouted at her. Forget to ask just what he meant. If he wanted a fight, damn it, he was going to get one. Tossing her head, she lied. “I knew it was you.”
He didn’t believe her. “How?” he demanded.
He hadn’t told anyone where he was going, although he had a feeling that Kate had probably guessed he was coming to see Kelsey. Still, his gut told him that she wouldn’t have said anything to her daughter, wanting her to be caught off guard.
Kelsey’s mind raced as she tried to come up with an answer to back up her claim. “The pounding sounded familiar.”
He stared at her. “I never pounded on your door,” he reminded her. “You pounded on mine, remember?”
“No,” she shot back. She was so angry at his presumption in coming here she couldn’t think straight. Didn’t he realize that she was trying to get over him? Was he here to just jerk her around, to see if she still cared? “I am trying to forget everything about you.”
Kelsey stopped abruptly, blowing out a breath. Everything she’d promised herself about her behavior if their paths should ever cross again had just gone out the window.
“Sorry,” she said in a much more subdued voice. She was better off pretending to be indifferent than angry if she wanted to get back at him. “I didn’t mean to shout. I just get edgy when I have a lot to do in a short amount of time.”
“And what is it that you’re trying to do in a short amount of time?” He knew the answer, but he hoped that if she was forced to say it out loud, maybe she would change her mind. On the way over, he’d decided that he was willing to try anything.
“Fly to New York.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked back into her bedroom.
He could feel her words skewering his stomach. Pressing his hand to his belly as if to stem the flow of blood, he followed her.
The sight of the opened suitcase on the bed with clothing overflowing out of it pinched his gut even harder.
“So you’re really going?” he heard himself ask.
“Sure. I’m exploring my options,” she said, throwing his words back at him. “You know, what you told me to do when I asked you if I should go.”
“I was trying to be impartial.”
“Congratulations, you win the Impartiality Award of the Year,” she bit off sarcastically. “Should look very nice next to your Indifferent Award.”
His eyes narrowed as he took in the accusation. “You think I’m indifferent?”
Kelsey raised herself up on her toes to be closer to his level. “I don’t think—I know. You are,” she declared.
He took a step into her space, his temper dangerously flaring. Kelsey stood her ground. “I’m indifferent about who wins the World Series. I’m indifferent about who wins the Super Bowl. I’m even indifferent about what brand of coffee I drink as long as it’s strong and reasonably hot. I am not indifferent about you.” Morgan fairly shouted at her now.
A sensible person might have taken this time to move back, or at least back off. Kelsey wasn’t feeling very sensible right now.
“Ha!” she retorted, then turned away to continue packing.
Morgan grabbed her by her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “I didn’t think I had the right to stand in your way if this was what you wanted.”
She lifted her chin. “Nice speech, Donnelly. How long did it take you to convince yourself you were being noble instead of just running scared?”
His eyes narrowed even more. “You think that I’m scared?”
His eyes darkened. Another woman would have known that this wasn’t the time to get into his face. But another woman wasn’t on the verge of losing everything the way she was.
Kelsey tossed her head so that her blond hair went sailing over her shoulder. “Yes, I think you’re scared. Really scared. Completely and utterly scared out of your mind.”
“Of what?” His voice was low, dangerous.
She was out on a limb, but she wasn’t about to crawl back to safety, not until she’d had her say. “Of caring again. I got to you, Morgan Donnelly.” She jabbed a finger into his
chest, emphasizing her point as she spoke. “For a very little while, I got to you,” she jabbed him again, “and it scared the hell out of you.”
He grabbed her finger before she could poke him a third time. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” she challenged pugnaciously.
“Yes.” He continued to hold on to the offending finger, keeping it wrapped in his hand as he spoke. “You didn’t get to me for a very little while—”
“I sure as hell—”
“For once in your life, will you shut up and listen?” he demanded, completely stunning her. “You didn’t get to me for a very little while.” He took a breath. “You got to me big-time. That was what scared me. Because my gut was twisting from wanting you. Because when we weren’t together, I kept finding myself counting off the minutes until we were. You were becoming too important to me. You were my morning and my night. My reason for doing, for being.
“I don’t like being dependent on anything.” Opening his hand, he released her index finger. “I’ve seen what dependency does. My father was dependent on my mother and when she died, he slowly went to pieces. He was a good, decent man and he fell apart, bit by bit until there was nothing left.
“And I started going the same route after Beth and Amy died. I finally, finally was getting myself together, and then you happened. You are nothing like Beth, as different from her as night was from day, and yet, I can’t breathe right without you around.”
She wasn’t going to let herself believe him, she wasn’t, Kelsey kept repeating to herself in the confines of her mind. Just some huge disappointment waiting for her in the wings if she believed him.
“So you’ve been holding your breath ever since we broke up?” she asked, disbelief vibrating in every syllable.
“Yes, I have,” he shot back. “And I can’t do it anymore. I thought I could, that it would get better as the days went by, but it just got worse. I felt as if my gut had been cut out without the benefit of an anesthetic.” He almost said “heart” instead of gut, but that would make him sound like some kind of wimp, and he wasn’t. He was just a guy who’d been hurting too much for too long. Every day without her was an eternity.
She could almost picture that and it made her cringe. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, ‘ouch,’” he echoed.
Her eyes held his as she tried to figure out if she was being a fool to believe him or a fool not to.
“So you’re telling me not to go?” she asked carefully.
In the last few days, he had become very aware of words and the burden they brought with them. “I’m asking you not to go.”
It occurred to Kelsey that, although it wasn’t very PC of her, she wanted him to make the initial demand. To stand in her way, yelling that love was making him behave like this.
She was most likely losing her mind—and it was all his fault. “Why? Why are you asking me not to go?”
Uncomfortable, he shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Your family’ll miss you.”
“I’m not flying into the Bermuda Triangle. I’ll be back.”
“Your mother’s pregnant. This is a difficult time for her. She needs you,” he urged.
“Very sensitive of you,” she said dismissively. “My mother has a whole support system in place. My father, my brothers, my sisters-in-law, they’re all there for her. They can get her through this.”
He shook his head. “That’s not the same thing as a daughter.”
“Granted, but again, I’ll be back,” she reminded him. Why was she doing this to herself? Why was she fishing for a response he wasn’t prepared or willing to give her? “If she needs me, I can be back in five hours. Less if there’s a strong tailwind.”
“Sometimes,” he told her slowly, “five hours just isn’t fast enough.”
Was he talking about a life-and-death situation? Her mother was the healthiest person she knew, but things could change quickly. “So now you’re trying scare tactics to get me to stay?”
It was time to lower his shields. He realized it was his only chance. If that required making himself vulnerable, so be it. “I’ll try anything I have to to get you to stay.”
For a second, he’d left her speechless. “You know,” she pointed out quietly, “there is a much simpler way to do that.”
“What is it?”
Was he serious? Did he need a road map? Or was he just pulling her leg? “I’m not going to spell it out for you, Donnelly.” But then she did. Sort of. “But it does involve three little words.”
“Stay put, Kelsey?” he guessed, managing to keep a straight face.
“Try again,” Kelsey prompted.
He took her into his arms, but he still didn’t say what she wanted to hear. “This isn’t easy for me, Kelsey.”
“If it came easily to you, it wouldn’t mean anything.”
Holding Kelsey at arm’s length, Morgan looked at her for a long moment. “And if I say it, if I tell you those three words, you’ll stay?”
“If you say them and mean them,” she underscored, “yes, I’ll stay.”
His eyes held hers for what felt like an eternity. And then he said, “I love you.”
Morgan wasn’t kidding when he’d said it wasn’t easy for him to utter the words. The man seemed positively pained. “Now say it as if someone wasn’t putting a match to your feet.”
Gathering her closer so that her body fit against his, Morgan looked down into her face.
“I love you, Kelsey. God knows I don’t want to, but there’s nothing I can do about it. When I thought about never seeing you again, it made me feel so hollow inside, so empty, I could hardly stand it. I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to feel empty, having each day that goes by exactly like the one before it and the one after it. I want life to be a surprise again, the way it was when we were together.”
This wasn’t any easier to say, but he knew it was the only way. And she deserved to know what he was feeling.
“I want to be part of something. I want to be part of you, part of your family. I want the whole nine yards.” He framed her face, loving her so much that it hurt. “Because living the way I was before you changed everything wasn’t living at all. It was just existing.”
She stared at him, stunned. His voice echoed in her head and she was afraid that she imagined all this. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Only if you think I’m proposing. Because I am. Badly,” he acknowledged, knowing his limitations. “But then, nobody has ever accused me of being a smooth talker.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” The grin in her eyes filtered down to her lips. “Sounds pretty smooth to me.”
Thank God she was going to stay. He wasn’t too late. “Then are you saying yes?”
He saw her eyes crinkle, the smile there making her eyes sparkle. “I’ve been saying yes all along, you big idiot. You just weren’t listening.”
“I thought you originally told me that there were no strings attached.”
Her slim shoulders moved up and then down. “I lied. I knew that if you suspected how I felt, you would have lost no time running for the hills. You almost did anyway.”
Morgan grinned at her as he drew his hand through her hair. “The hills are highly overrated.”
She’d made a run for them a time or two herself. “Tell me about it.”
He shook his head. “Maybe later. Right now, we’ve got three weeks to catch up on and I intend to start right now.” He began to unbutton her blouse slowly.
She felt the chills beginning. “I love a take-charge guy.”
Morgan laughed then, really laughed. “The hell you do. You like bossing me around.”
But it didn’t matter. They had the rest of their lives to sort out their boundaries, he thought, and right now, all he wanted to do was merge those boundaries and lose himself in her.
It was the one place he felt at home.
Epilogue
Déjà vu.
This had to be déj�
� vu, Kelsey had thought.
Eight and a half months ago, Kelsey recalled, she’d gone through the very same thing: burst through the hospital doors practically before the electronic eye had time to pull them automatically back, her heart lodged in the middle of her throat.
Except that eight and a half months ago it had been fear that had been coursing through her veins. This time it had been anticipation and excitement that surged through her. And, eight and a half months ago, her mother had sworn her to secrecy, so she’d made her break-neck odyssey alone.
It was no secret now what had sent her mother off to the hospital, once again huddled in the backseat of Morgan’s car while a siren pealed a warning for other cars to pull over.
Moreover, Kelsey had thought gratefully, she definitely wasn’t alone. Morgan was driving and her father was in the backseat with her mother, holding tightly on to her hand and telling her to hang on, that everything was going to be all right.
Not only was her father here with her, but her brothers and their wives, too, and Cody. They had all come, splitting up in two vehicles that had followed Morgan’s, staying closer than shadows.
The only calm one in the bunch, relatively speaking, had been Cody. The little boy was more excited about the prospect that sometime during this special night, Santa would make an appearance and leave presents not only beneath his Christmas tree, but the one he’d just left behind at his grandparents’ house. After all, it was Christmas Eve. The idea that a baby was about to make his or her appearance in the world any minute now came in as a very distant second.
Cody had wanted to ride to the hospital with “Uncle Morgan,” hoping to be allowed to man the siren or the flashing lights. Trent had managed to convince the boy that it would be more fun on the return trip, when things weren’t so hectic. Cody had reluctantly agreed, but only after Morgan had promised him that he could indeed turn on the siren for a minute.
Morgan.
Her Morgan.
As his wife of two months, she had the right to think of him that way. Funny how this baby had brought them initially together and now everything had come full circle.
A Lawman for Christmas Page 15
