by Cindy Gerard
Giggling and squeezing for all she was worth, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist and clung for dear life.
“Hey, baby.” He buried his face in the downy softness of her neck, smelling sunshine and life and a hint of her mother’s favorite perfume. He treasured it all, the silk of her hair, the baby softness of her cheek, the look in Emma’s eyes as she watched them from a distance.
“How’s the sweetest pea in the garden?” he finally managed as he squatted on his haunches and set Sara back so he could look at her.
It was all he could do to pinch back tears as Sara scolded him for calling her by that baby name, then looked at him with her mother’s soulful brown eyes. “I miss you, Daddy.”
“Me, too, baby,” he murmured, fighting the husky break in his voice. “Me, too. But we’ll make up for it today, okay?”
“Okay!” she agreed with the innocent trust of youth that shattered what was left of the pieces of his heart.
With a shy smile and an expectant look, she asked the inevitable question. “Can I touch it?”
He couldn’t stop a chuckle. “All right” Feigning impatience, he tugged off his black Stetson and let her rub his head.
She squealed in delight. “It tickles.”
“That’s because it’s growing back.”
“I’m glad,” she whispered confidentially. “I like you better with hair. Jamie’s grampa doesn’t have any hair either, but she says his won’t grow back ’cause he’s bald.”
“Well, I’m a ways from worrying about that possibility. It’ll all grow back in a couple of months. Does that work for you?”
She nodded.
“Now, have you had your fill?”
After one last nuggie that sent her into another giggle fest, he resettled his hat.
“Would you care if I talk to your mom for a minute before we get on with our afternoon?”
Sara’s pixie face pinched with worry as she looked from her father to her mother. “Okay. Can I go see Cary while you guys talk? She’s over at the jungle gym.”
Garrett glanced over his shoulder in the direction Sara pointed. Confirming that Sara’s friend was there, he looked back to Emma. “Okay with you, Em?”
When she hesitated, then gave in with a quick nod, he gave Sara Jane one last hug. With a soft pat on her bottom, he sent her on her way to play with her friend.
And then for the longest time, he just stood there, one palm cupping the back of his neck, the other stuffed in his hip pocket, both sweating like those of a prisoner who was walking death row.
He’d waited for this moment. He’d rehearsed what he was going to say if he ever got the chance. Now it was here...and all he could do was look at her. At the hollowness of her cheeks, at the lack of life in her wide-set eyes, at the aloofness that cloaked her like a shield. In spite of it all, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
She’d always been his brown-eyed girl. He’d seen those coffee-colored eyes mist over with tears of joy, smile without pretense or care, darken for him with the heat of passion. Even the distrustful way she watched him now couldn’t dull the memories or lessen the impact of seeing her again.
She’d let her long hair flow free. Filtered sunlight caught its chestnut sheen, sparking highlights of red and gold. An uncommonly crisp June breeze lifted it from her shoulders, whipped a flyaway strand across her face. It was a face that haunted him at night, shadowed him during the day.
Those round, wide-set eyes were framed by features both delicate and intriguingly bold. Her mouth was full, her cheekbones classically high. Everything about her was classic. Everything about her made him think of southern nights and supple woman—even the pale, elegant hand she raised to brush her windswept hair back behind her ear.
It was then he saw she’d taken off her wedding ring.
Something inside him shattered. Something inside him died. He should have expected it. But he hadn’t been prepared. He hadn’t been prepared for any of this.
“Sara... she looks good,” he finally offered in an attempt to break the tension and pull himself back together.
Emma nodded, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her light, unconstructed white linen jacket, her gaze resolutely and deliberately fixed on the ground at his feet. “She misses you.”
“And that’s my fault?” The accusation and the harshness at which he leveled it came out before he could stop it—and relayed all the frustration and misery he felt over losing not only his wife but his daughter.
Her eyes cut to his and for the first time, he saw a flicker of life. “Yes,” she said evenly. “I believe you could say it is.”
He covered his jaw with his palm, looked away, drew a deep breath, then fixed his gaze on her again. “I didn’t cheat on you, Em. I know what you thought you saw—”
“Please, don’t.”
Her voice was so void of emotion, her eyes so empty of tears, it frightened him.
His carefully planned reason collapsed under the weight of that fear. “Don’t what? Don’t defend myself? Don’t wish to hell that you would talk to me and tell me why you think I’d even look at another woman, let alone take one to bed?”
She shook her head, slowly backed away. “I can’t do this, Garrett. I can’t. I just want to get on with my life.”
“Your life?” he countered, working against the pain and the anger to keep his voice low. “What happened to our life?”
“Our life,” she echoed with a hopelessness that almost brought him to his knees. “Our life—together—is over. It has been for a while now. It...it was just a question of me opening my eyes and seeing it.”
The finality in her tone stunned him into silence. The emptiness in her eyes humbled him into submission.
“What do you want from me, Em? What can I say to you that will make you believe me? For godsake, what did I do? What did I do to lose your trust?”
For a moment he saw her weaken and want and hurt the way he was hurting—then he hated himself for the small twist of triumph he felt knowing he wasn’t alone in his pain. But her indifference sped back in a heartbeat. She wrapped it around her like a wall of concrete and barbwire.
“I won’t keep you from seeing Sara,” she said in an evenly modulated tone and purposefully ignored his questions. “That’s why I brought her today instead of sending her with Maddie or Mother. To tell you that myself, and to ask you not to call me anymore.”
He balled his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her and shaking her until he broke her. But she was already broken. And so fragile he was afraid that if he touched her, if he said the wrong thing, it would be the end of them both.
“I need to get on with my life, Garrett. I can’t do it with you constantly reminding me of my failures.”
The breath slammed out of him. “Your failures? Emma. What the hell are you talking about?”
She shivered, but didn’t flinch. “I’m trying to tell you that I accept my share of the blame. I can do that much. But what I can’t do, is be your wife anymore.”
Her words blurred, tangled, bled him of the power of reason, sucked him of the will to fight. “I don’t understand. Not any of this.”
“Then I guess that’s something you’ll have to figure out on your own.”
He swallowed hard. “Whatever happened to figuring things out together?”
“Life happened,” she said with such bitterness and certainty he wasn’t sure if he knew her anymore. “Yours and mine. And somewhere along the line it ended up not being ours.”
She waited the space of several slow, heavy breaths. “If you won’t file, I will.”
The earth rocked beneath his feet. Somehow, he found the presence of mind to speak. “I don’t want a divorce.” He enunciated each word with calculated control—a control he was far from feeling. “I want you. I want us. I want my family back.”
The last words erupted on a shout of frustration so heated, it attracted the concerned stares of an elder
ly couple strolling by several yards away.
“I want you back,” he repeated on a ragged whisper as he strode deliberately toward her.
She met his gaze one last time. And one last time she refused to respond to his plea. “Maddie will be waiting for Sara outside the apartment at eight.”
Her calm control sapped the last of his. “To hell with Maddie. To hell with seeing you by accident and Sara according to some goddamn timetable. You’re my wife. She’s my child.”
She blinked once, slowly, then turned and headed for the car.
“How can you just walk away from this?” He didn’t think, didn’t weigh the consequences as he grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “Tell me...tell me you don’t love me anymore and I’ll leave you alone.”
His words boiled out, demanding an answer he knew he might not want to hear. But he was past reason, beyond caution. “Tell me you don’t miss this, and I’ll never bother you again.”
Pinning her with his gaze, he hauled her hard against him, then crushed her in his arms where she belonged.
Instinct took over then. Instinct and need.
He covered her mouth with his, sank into her softness, savored her familiar, sultry scent. God, he’d missed the taste of her, the feel of her beneath his hands, molded to his body.
With a groan that came from low in his throat, he deepened the contact, fed on the flavor he’d been addicted to since he’d stolen his first kiss. With each thrust of his tongue he told her it had been too long. He needed too much. He wanted too badly.
On some level he knew that possession and greed played as big a part in his actions as love did. That knowledge didn’t ease the rough glide of his hands over her back. Couldn’t stop the intimate press of his hips that demanded she give him back the response he needed.
What he couldn’t accomplish with words, what he couldn’t coerce with his kiss, he prayed that a greater power could. All the while he held her, he prayed to God that the woman in his arms would come back to life as the woman he had loved.
But his prayers weren’t answered.
And her response never came.
With an ache so huge it left him shaking, he slowly pulled away. The eyes that had once warmed his were as cold as winter. The expressive face he’d loved forever was as empty of emotion as a block of wood.
“Tell me you don’t love me,” he repeated, an urgent demand, a rusty plea for a response he wasn’t sure he could handle, didn’t want to hear.
All he heard was her silence.
And all he would see for days and nights to come was the sight of her walking away.
Three
“I love you, sweetheart, but quite frankly, you look like hell.” Maya James Bradford delivered her frank assessment of her son’s appearance with characteristic candor.
Though he gave up a weary smile, Garrett didn’t look up from the set of blueprints spread across his drafting table. “I see marriage hasn’t done anything to take the edge off your tongue, Mother.”
It had been three months since Maya and Logan Bradford had exchanged vows. Close to three weeks since Emma had left him. Not a day had passed that he hadn’t missed her or agonized over how he could get her back. While he wasn’t up to expressing it, he was pleased to see his mother so obviously happy. He was not pleased to see her in his office tonight—especially since the first words out of her mouth foreshadowed where her visit was leading.
“This isn’t like you, Garrett.” She eased onto a stool beside him.
He glanced at her then, saw the color love had painted in her cheeks, took stock of the fact that in her late fifties, she was still an attractive, vital woman. Silently, he congratulated Logan Bradford on his good taste and good fortune, and tried to steer the conversation away from himself to her.
“And that particular suit isn’t like you, either,” he said, forcing a teasing tone that not only got the smile he wanted but hopefully distracted her from the little heart-to-heart she had in mind. “Showing a lot of leg these days. Not that they aren’t great legs,” he added when she narrowed her eyes.
“I think it falls into the category of new leaves—”
“And new love?” he offered, truly happy for her. “Speaking of which, how is Logan?”
“Logan is wonderful,” she stated without preamble or hesitation. “But it’s not Logan I came here to talk about.”
“If you came here to talk about Emma and me, just don’t start, okay?”
He let out a deep breath, disgusted with himself over the bite he’d just taken out of his mother.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snipe at you.”
“And I didn’t mean to open any wounds. It’s just that I don’t understand why you two are still apart. You love each other. You always have.”
“In the immortal words of Tina Turner, ‘What’s love got to do with lit?’”
He wasn’t proud of his sarcasm. Grim-faced, he stared at the blueprints without really seeing them. “She wants it over. She’s made it clear. And I’m done begging. I can only swallow so much pride.”
When he fell silent, she rested a gentle hand on his arm. “I don’t mean to interfere—but I want you to think about something. Your father—you’re so like him,” she reflected softly before continuing. “Your father never would have given up on something he believed in.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
“If you believe in your love, then your pride is the only thing getting in your way. Take some time away from the business—you’re long overdue, anyway—and go after her.
“But for now, for heaven’s sake, go home,” she added after touching her hand to his hair. “It’s late. And you work too hard.”
After a long look at his silent profile, she gave up and left him.
Since that day in the park, Garrett had honored Emma’s wishes and left her alone. His mother was right, though. Pride had as much to do with that decision as Emma’s request. Even in late June, however, pride was a hell of a cold companion at night. But despite what his mother had said, pride was also the only thing that kept him going. That and his visits with Sara.
His work made the days pass. Nothing helped with the nights. Oh, Gloria was always waiting in the wings. Her invitation was consistent and clear. He didn’t even consider taking her up on it. He didn’t want another woman in his bed. He wanted Emma. And he began to hate himself for that weakness, even as he prayed that if he gave her some time, she’d change her mind.
Though he had yet to sign them, the day that Emma had served him with divorce papers, he’d finally accepted that she really wanted it over between them. Sara, in her innocence, however, just wouldn’t let it rest.
“Mommy has a summer job at Aunt Maddie’s,” she announced one day over a burger and fries at her favorite fast-food restaurant.
Maddie’s shop was an upscale, artsy gallery that catered to the “resettlement crowd” of celebrities and multimillionaires who claimed the Jackson Hole area with its spectacular view of the Tetons and its wealth of equally spectacular and pricey building sites as their second homes. Her shop, Necessities, showcased and sold not only Maddie’s original works of pottery, but exhibited sculptures, weavings and multiple medias of art on canvas of other local artisans.
“She’s a girl Friday,” Sara said proudly, referring to her mother, then wrinkled her little nose and asked with open confusion, “What’s a girl Friday?”
At the first mention of Emma’s name, Garrett had lost the taste for his french fries. He leaned back, shoved them aside. “Oh, it’s kind of like a helper. She probably watches the shop for Maddie, takes care of customers, that sort of thing.”
Sara considered, then nodded. “Prob’ly.”
“Does she like it?” He couldn’t help himself from asking any more than he could stop his next thought from forming. Emma had always enjoyed her summers off. Had enjoyed the extra time at home. She used to enjoy a lot of things, he thought glumly—like being his wife.
Sara shrugged, oblivious to the self-examination of his failings. “Maddie pays her money. I think she likes that. She says maybe we’ll be moving out on our own soon.”
He slumped back in the molded plastic booth and looked absently out the window. “Will that make her happy, do you think? Being out on her own?”
Sara twisted her elfin mouth into a frown and gave him a huge shrug. “I sure hope so. Mommy’s never happy anymore.”
Mommy’s never happy anymore.
Sara’s innocently revealing words should have given Garrett a measure of satisfaction as they echoed through his mind in the days to come. He tried to tell himself he was glad Emma was hurting—the way he’d been hurting since she’d walked out his door and taken his life with her.
But the thought of her misery only increased his own. He couldn’t bear to think of her in pain—had been so busy nursing his own wounds, he’d deliberately discounted the weight of hers.
Mommy’s never happy anymore.
He’d thought he had too much pride. But in the end pride didn’t factor into the equation.
The summer night was warm when he walked down the street and stopped outside Necessities. With an ache in his gut, Garrett watched through half an inch of plate glass as Emma moved about Maddie’s shop. She looked so beautiful, yet so wooden and removed it scared the hell out of him. It had been less than a month since she’d left him, but already she was a shadow of the warm, giving woman who was his wife. A ghost of the girl who had smiled with her eyes and loved with all her heart.
Your father never would have given up on something he believed in. Just like Sara’s words, his mother’s words had played like a recording day after day in his mind—but it only took seeing his wife again to finally send the message home. He had given up. He’d given up on her. Worse, he’d given up on them.
What a pathetic, sorry excuse for a man. He’d been so mired in self-pity, so embedded in the righteousness of being wronged, he’d given up. Bottom line, he’d quit.
Garrett James had never been a quitter. Never walked away from a fight. Yet he’d turned his back on the most important battle of his life.
