“Do you have any idea what it’s like to have complete strangers come up to me in the grocery store and introduce their children to me as yours?”
The agony reflected upon her delicate features reached into Johnny’s heart and squeezed hard. That she had been the butt of such a cruel joke explained much about why she had behaved the way she did.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured. “I don’t know who’s been stirring the ashes, but somebody’s been playing mind games with you by sending up false smoke signals.”
He tilted her chin up with the pad of one thumb, and Johnny felt her tremble at his touch. This time Annie did not avert her eyes from his. With his free hand he caressed the curve of her neck. Less than a minute ago he had felt like strangling her. Now as she looked straight into his soul searching for answers, he felt as inexplicably drawn to her as a moth to the flame that is certain to destroy it.
“Who are you going to believe, Annie? Some stranger or me?” he asked her softly. “It should be enough for you to hear from my own lips that I’ve never fathered any child other than the one you are carrying now.”
Slipping a hand beneath the loose-fitting shirt Annie was wearing, Johnny made his first mystical connection with the living seed of their love. Though it was far too soon to feel anything definite, the tingle that registered throughout his body assured him that his presence had been duly noted.
Annie’s eyes widened, acknowledging the bond, herself.
“Please don’t do this to me,” she begged of him.
Johnny directed her gaze to the family portrait on display in the room with them. “You don’t know what it’s like to grow up without a father. I do. My grandmother did her best to take the place of my mother, but a child without a loving daddy feels that absence more keenly than you can imagine. There’s only one reason I can think of that you wouldn’t want me to be a part of this child’s life. Or yours. That’s that you are ashamed of sleeping with me and you want to hide our baby’s true heritage from him.”
Though his words were wrapped in pain, Johnny’s proud, chiseled features radiated defiance.
Annie sucked in her breath at the charge. Many things motivated her, but none of them included an ounce of bigotry.
“Nothing could be farther from the truth,” she exclaimed.
Taking Johnny’s hand from the flat plane of her tummy, she brought it to her lips and kissed it tenderly. If only to alleviate his darkest fears, she was moved to reveal her own.
“Not telling you was a mistake. I know that now. The only reason I didn’t was because I was afraid.”
Taking a deep breath, she delved into a painful past she would just as soon forget and offered it to Johnny on a silver plate. She was fully prepared for him to throw it right back in her face.
“I told you that I had a miscarriage once. What I didn’t tell you was how the father reacted when confronted with the news of my pregnancy. He accused me of sleeping around, of deliberately trying to trick him into marriage and completely ruining his future. He didn’t hesitate to slander my name all over the community. Even though I lost the baby before I even started showing, my reputation was ruined. And my self-esteem was in shreds. I was only seventeen at the time, but the ache has stayed with me all my life. I couldn’t bear the thought of you feeling the same way about me that he did. I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to trap you in any way.”
“Trap?”
The word exploded from Johnny’s mouth like a shotgun shell. Despite his intentions to keep quiet until Annie had finished speaking, he couldn’t help himself from interjecting his feelings on the subject.
“Love doesn’t trap or ensnare. Love calls, and if you are lucky enough, love answers of its own free will.”
The unshed tears glistening in his eyes turned them the color of a wet night sky sprinkled with millions of tiny stars. Swallowing hard, Annie found herself wishing upon every single one.
“I love you, Annie. I should have told you sooner, but I only figured it out myself a little while ago. Not just because of the baby, either. I came to that realization way before Ester suggested the possibility that you were pregnant. For what it’s worth, I was going to propose to you the night I came home from Denver, but since you had my bags all packed and ready to go, it didn’t seem like a good time.”
The self-deprecating laugh that shook Annie’s body was mixed with tears falling freely down her face. Johnny caught her as her knees buckled beneath her. Carrying her to the couch, he set her down as carefully as a piece of spun glass. He wondered if one miscarriage made a woman more susceptible to more. The possibility of losing their baby clawed at his guts. The thought of losing Annie completely eviscerated him.
He assumed full responsibility for the dark circles under her eyes. She looked pale and shaky. And more beautiful to him than any other woman on the face of the planet.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, heading toward the phone to alert the emergency room that he was on the way.
“I am now,” Annie assured him. “I just feel a little light-headed and very foolish. I was scared that you might not want a baby in your life. Or if you did, that you might try to take ours away from me like the courts did with Laurel. She was literally ripped from my arms. Recovering from the pain of that experience hasn’t been easy, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have trusted you.”
“Damned right,” Johnny told her with no apparent rancor left in his voice.
The kiss on the tip of Annie’s nose underscored his point. Her reasons for keeping her pregnancy a secret were far more complicated than he had imagined. Understanding them helped Johnny understand her. And love her even more.
“Can you forgive me?” Annie asked, entreating him to sit beside her on the couch.
“That depends,” he told her.
Surely if anyone needed to ask forgiveness it was he. That he could have ever thought this gentle woman capable of rejecting him on the basis of skin color made Johnny ashamed of himself. Rather than complying with her request to sit down, he brushed aside his old fears of rejection and knelt on the couch before her.
“Will you marry me?”
Such a sacred question warranted a response from the heart as well as the head. Afraid to speak from an emotional state of euphoria, Annie considered her response carefully.
“I don’t want you to feel manipulated into asking me that. I don’t want you to feel tricked into a marriage for the sake of a child. And I don’t want you to think that I would keep your child from you if I don’t marry you.”
“If you’re trying to get me to rescind the question, it’s not working,” he told her. “Maybe it would help if you’d let me make my feelings for you perfectly clear. I’m not the kind of man who lets myself be trapped into anything I don’t want to do. As much as I love my job, it doesn’t fill the hole in my heart that you do. You complete me as a man. The thought of you having my child fills me with so much pride that my chest feels like it’s going to split right open. It also fills me with joy and hope for the future.”
Running her fingers through the thick, dark hair above his ears, Annie dragged her fingertips across his scalp. He very nearly purred as she massaged the nape of his neck.
“To think that I was afraid you would disavow our baby… Are you sure you want a woman who could make such a horrible assumption about you?”
“Sweetheart, I don’t love you because you haven’t made any mistakes—any more than you shouldn’t love me because you’re afraid I’ll make the same mistakes that others have in your past. Love is unconditional. And fearless.
“The battlefield taught me how precious life is. You have no idea how grateful I am that you never considered terminating this pregnancy. I think it would kill me to lose either one of you. I’m not asking you to marry me simply to provide our baby with a two-parent family, but because I love you beyond words.
“There’s no need to point out the obstacles to me, either. I truly believe that our differe
nt backgrounds, personalities and talents can come together like the many pieces of glass that you solder together so skillfully. If love is the bond that holds us together, we have the power to make a masterpiece of our lives. A baby will only perfect the picture.”
Tears streamed down Annie’s face. She had no idea that the warrior she had taken into her bed was also a poet at heart. Johnny’s tender words of love washed away the last of her objections. She bade him to get up off of his knees and kiss his wife-to-be.
Johnny willingly complied. He gathered her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.
No longer willing to run away from hurt if it meant closing herself off to living and loving fully, Annie gave herself completely to her future husband. Time spent in the shadow of the Wind River Mountains had truly helped heal her spirit. Having grappled with the demons in their respective pasts, both she and Johnny understood that the life they chose would not be without adversity.
What life worth living wasn’t?
Together they committed to passing on to their children a love capable of overcoming barriers and making the world a better place. In the dappled light of a stained-glass heart that Annie had hung in the window, they consummated the vows they made to each other. The wedding they planned would embrace both their cultures and celebrate the beginning of their life together. A life they promised to take one heartbeat at a time.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8617-1
WARRIOR IN HER BED
Copyright © 2003 by Cathleen Galitz
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
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