It looked like an overture, him holding the drink out to her in invitation, but all she could do was stare at it, and then past to the dark, worried eyes of the man she spent every minute thinking about.
“If you take the drink, you’re not obligated to take me back, you know,” he said softly, plucking the thoughts straight from her mind.
Not obligated to take me back.
Did that mean he wanted her back? God knew, she wanted him, but her self-esteem had become progressively stronger over the past week. Wanting something and being able to have it weren’t the same thing. Wanting something didn’t make it good for her.
Snarky responses were her emotional currency. She was good at them and other tactics that kept her apart from others. Kept her safe. But standing there, her mouth dry and her eyes damp, she couldn’t think of anything to say.
Drinking the drink would at least keep her mouth busy, less pressure to say something.
She took the bottle and drank deeply until about a third of it was gone.
All under the weight of his sad gaze.
“I don’t know what to say. If you want to say something, just—”
“I talked to Treadwell,” he cut in, skipping over the relationship talk into something safer.
Something he’d know she wanted to hear, she’d been pressing him to do it. A safe subject.
“What did you tell him?”
“Everything,” he said, not quite a whisper but the kind of soft talk that wanted closeness. To be closer than they were, standing across the tiny kitchenette from one another.
“What’s everything?”
“What happened to my mom. Why I lost the thread of what I was doing last season. Why I’m still struggling to get my feet under me.”
No ring of finality came with his words, they almost sounded like a question.
“What changed your mind?”
“He wouldn’t leave.” Beck chuckled a little. “Slept by my bed, couldn’t get rid of him. Wore me down, I guess.”
Ah. Nothing to do with their trip down the mountain. Or her.
“I’m glad he stayed. So he kept asking?”
“No. I asked him if he was going to let you stay.” He watched her too closely, as if also afraid of putting a foot out of line. Was this him trying to salvage a friendship? A working relationship? Something more? “He said he’d already talked to you about it, and you were staying. He was glad you told him because he needs his people to know he’ll have their backs.”
“Oh.” She could see how that would be motivating. Not something to feel disappointment over. “I do feel that way. I guess he just needed to absorb it a bit, and in the ambulance, it was kind of a lot to take in while your condition was obviously the biggest concern. I probably should’ve waited, but once I’d decided...”
“When did you decide?”
She shifted, the urge to conceal again proving to her how far she still had to go to live in the open air. Not so much because the answer would hurt her this time, but it might hurt him. It definitely was a much closer blow to the subject they weren’t talking about.
“In the hangar,” she said finally, then drew a deep breath to fortify herself. “Treadwell has said he would welcome me onto his team after camp. But I told him I needed to talk to you first. It’s your team too...”
“I want you there,” he said without hesitation. “I want you there even if you won’t take me back today. Not because I want to keep an eye on you but because I’m hoping that eventually I’ll prove myself to you, that I’ll be able to get myself out of the red.”
“Beck...”
“Because I love you. I knew it that morning, before we left. I can’t excuse what I came damned close to doing, but I need to explain to you how I actually got there and said I loved you the first time in that way. I know how dirty that was. I know you probably don’t even believe it...”
“I believe it.” She waved a hand. “Slow down. For a man who never talks, you’re saying a lot of things. I think I may have gotten used to listening slower.”
He grinned then, and before she knew it he stood before her and had her cheeks in his hands, his lips pressing softly to her forehead.
“That’s not slower,” she choked, eyes stinging and ears suddenly itching, because that’s just how lucky she was—every time she cried, she wanted to sit on the floor and kick her ear like a dog.
“Sorry. Sorry...” He reached up to scratch his head, seemed to remember the wound, and pulled his hand away again. “I don’t remember what I was saying.”
“You were saying you were a jerk to say you loved me to manipulate me not to jump.”
“Wasn’t manipulation,” he argued. “It was pleading. Here’s...here’s the thing. On your first jump, when I went without you and then got to the ground to see your chute in the air, heading for the fire, the possibility of all the things that could happen to you became some kind of gruesome certainty they would. The more I felt for you, the bigger those ideas became in my mind. I know it’s not fair. I know it’s not rational. I know... Actually, I have a standing appointment with the counselor to try and screw my head on straight. I’m talking to her, and all I really want to do is talk to you.”
Getting help, that was something real. Telling Treadwell. Talking to her without her having to badger and push.
“Or touch you. Which... I’m going to put my hands in my pockets to avoid.”
It was cute. The man who glowered his way through life actually looked like he was about ten years younger as he stood there, hands stretching the pockets of his jeans down from how far in he’d shoved them.
“You’re not angry that I didn’t come visit?”
“I know why you didn’t come, honey. But I want you to know, it wasn’t your absence that changed my mind about what I’ve been doing.”
“The chief?”
“It was your tears,” he said, his hands jerking the pockets again, controlling that urge to touch and connect. “Seeing the misery and fear on your face. Something you said back on the bus that day about what if my mom had been the one to survive. I saw it in your eyes when you came back for me.”
Her breathing sped up and her vision began to wave like rising heat. She was going to cry again. If she opened her mouth to talk, what came out wouldn’t be words.
“I never want you to have to live with what I’ve lived with.”
She gave up trying to make words take shape in her head and just held her hand out to him. Both of his shot from his pockets at once and he pulled her close, grunting a little from how hard he’d tugged and she’d impacted.
That got through.
“Your ribs!” She registered that her voice had gone screeching into the stratosphere, but he didn’t let go of her even when she made to pull back.
“I have a fresh batch of salts,” he whispered into her hair, and she gave in and rested her forehead against the center of his chest, her hands on his hips because she still couldn’t bring herself to squeeze back as the tears began to fall and her nose stopped working.
The last sniff she managed through her rapidly swelling sinuses confirmed he still had the smell of hospital on him.
“You do seem to need a bath,” she teased, tilting her head back to look at him. “But I do too.”
“Honey and dirt.” He looked at her mouth long and hard. “I’m about to ask you to have a bath with me while still wondering if it’s okay to kiss you... See how much I have to learn about relationships?”
She lifted her mouth, not warning him about how salty she probably was. Or that her nose might be about to run and he should kiss her quickly. When his lips pressed to hers, trembling met trembling, regret and relief, and a golden ray of hope, warming like morning’s first sunshine. Bright. So full of promise as to be blinding.
When he lifted his head, his gaze trave
led over her wet cheeks and he lifted his hands to brush the tears away. “You’re still crying.”
“I’ve been working myself to exhaustion to avoid it.” She laughed a little. “But it’s easing up. We could have a bath, and then the wetness won’t be so obvious.”
His smile was all cheek as he turned with her to walk to the table to fetch the salts to take with them. “You have good ideas.”
“Sometimes,” she said, feeling the first urge to smile in forever, and with an uncontrollable urge to tease him, to play. “I hope you don’t think we’re going to have sex in here. You’re hurt. You don’t need jostling.”
“You planning to jostle me?”
“Nothing strenuous. Like that bag. You can’t carry that bag right now. Were you going to take it to your truck?”
He stopped at the bathroom door, still holding her hand, still looking a little worried. “If you’re not ready.”
“Really?” she asked, rising on her toes to kiss him. “There you go again, thinking I can’t handle what I say I can handle.”
EPILOGUE
Two years and three months later...
LAUREN ELLISON STOOD at the kitchen window to the newly rebuilt wooded cottage she shared with her husband, staring out at the shiny new workshop he’d disappeared into. It had been almost two hours since they’d returned home from his mother’s long-overdue memorial service.
California’s records had provided no matches for Beck’s DNA, but two months ago officials in southern Oregon had contacted them. Scant remains washed ashore years ago had finally been tested. They’d found her. Proof she’d drowned, not burned. A few weeks’ bureaucratic wrangling and they’d finally obtained the permission required to bring Molly Ellison home.
He’d seemed all right after the quiet service, surrounded by his new family, people who’d never met his mother but who wanted to pay their respects to the woman who’d given the Autry clan its fourth son. It had been two hours, alone in the one place on their little homestead she’d promised not to go.
They’d reached that unbelievable place where anything could be said as long as it was said with love. At work. At home. Anywhere. Best friends. Partners. Lovers. And, someday soon, parents.
Actually, he was in the one place she’d promised not to go inside. She could go to the door. Just to check on him. Make sure he knew she was there if he needed her.
She hurried out the back door and soon stood at the door of the man cave, and knocked. “Babe? You still in there?”
In seconds, he appeared there, still looking crisp in the white button-down he’d worn to the service. Not falling apart. Not bereft, although she still saw the sadness of the day lingering in his inky eyes.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He leaned down to steal a little kiss, and since it seemed final, she nodded and made to step back from the door.
“Just needed to make sure you were okay.” She still wasn’t sure he was, but the hand at her waist firmed and began to steer her around so she stood with her back to the door. “Um...if you want me to go...”
“I don’t.” He stayed with her outside the building, and when she looked over her shoulder at him, he smiled. “I have a surprise in the workshop. But I want you to close your eyes. It’s not wrapped.”
He wanted her to come inside his hideaway? She’d spent months wondering what he was making out here—chairs, tables, a fancy hutch for the metric boatload of papercraft supplies she’d accumulated after realizing last winter she had time to put together scrapbooks of their exploits for their future children.
“Is it furniture? People don’t wrap furniture, do they?” He’d brought in wood and supplies the day the small building had been considered functional. The woodshop was his second favorite place to be, outside the woods. Or maybe third, if bed with her got counted as a prime location, and it did. “It’s big, right?”
“Play along.” He put one large, warm hand over her eyes, then wrapped his other arm around her waist to spin her slowly back toward the building, using his body to propel her forward. “Step.”
She did, trusting him to steer her but still reaching out ahead of her with waving hands to keep from hitting anything.
Not ten paces in, he stopped them, pulling her back against his warmth and breathing in her ear. “You ready?”
“Uh...yeah! You know I’m not good at playing along or playing it cool.” She wrapped her hands around the hand covering her eyes and gave a little tug.
His hand dropped and with the low lighting inside it took her eyes time to adjust.
Darkness began to fade and lines appeared, then shapes, and finally detail.
Arcs for feet, legs, wooden spindles, a mattress. And a teddy bear in the center. Cradle. Rocking cradle. For the children they didn’t yet have and hadn’t actually started to plan yet.
She felt herself moving forward again, and he let go so she could touch it. Running her fingers over the smooth, polished wood still didn’t make it seem real. “This is what you’ve been making all this time?”
“Don’t like it?” he asked. “I thought...make the cradle and then, when I was ready, I’d give it to you.”
Ready? Did ready mean...?
“When did you get done?”
“This morning.”
She couldn’t stop touching the smooth, cool gray wood. “What kind of wood is this?”
“Tan oak.” He answered all the questions except the one she hadn’t asked. She never wanted to push when it came to children, but this... She had to ask.
“So, this morning you got finished and you’re just really excited and want to show me?”
“This morning I got finished, and realized as soon as I placed the bear in it that I was ready.”
“You’re ready?” she repeated, and left the beautiful, still-rocking cradle to return to her even more beautiful husband. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve gone and gotten yourself in the family way, Mr. Ellison?”
He smiled at her teasing and pulled his arms around her as she pressed close. “I’m willing to try. We can just have lots of unprotected sex and whoever gets pregnant first can do the heavy lifting on this one.”
“That’s good to know, because I have something to tell you.” She tilted her head back to watch his face, to experience every drop of joy this life had to offer. “I win.”
* * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Amalie Berlin
Healed Under the Mistletoe
Their Christmas to Remember
Back in Dr. Xenakis’ Arms
The Rescue Doc’s Christmas Miracle
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Finding Her Forever Family by Traci Douglass.
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Finding Her Forever Family
by Traci Douglass
CHAPTER ONE
“WHERE’S THE SERVER?” ER Trauma Nurse Wendy Smith asked as she and her sister-in-law, Aiyana, grabbed a table at the Snaggle Tooth. The pub was all but empty, and she was disappointed to find no trace of an employee anywhere.
“Welcome!” a guy finally shouted from the kitchen doorway, eyeing Aiyana’s enormous belly with trepidation. “Be with you in a second.”
Her sister-in-law, besides being married to Wendy’s oldest brother, Ned, was also thirty-seven weeks pregnant with twins. Wendy felt sorry for her, and a bit envious, to be honest.
Not that she’d share those feelings with anyone.
Having children of her own wasn’t in the cards.
It had been Aiyana’s idea to eat a late lunch at the pub today and against Wendy’s better judgment she’d said yes. The place held special memories for her sister-in-law. It was where she and Ned had gone on their first date. The pub was also where Wendy’s friend and boss, Dr. Jake Ryder, had taken his new wife, Dr. Molly Flynn, after their first date. Seemed the place was crawling with love bugs. Wendy did her best not to itch.
But at least the food was good. And when a hungry pregnant woman suggested the place that served her favorite comfort meal, you didn’t argue.
Aiyana picked up a menu off the scarred wooden tabletop, then shifted in her seat, trying to get comfortable. At near full-term, however, it wasn’t happening.
“Need help?” Wendy asked.
“What I need is a crowbar.” Seemed the only part of her usually effervescent sister-in-law that functioned properly these days was her appetite. Everything else had gone wonky because of sleep deprivation and abundant hormones.
“How about we split the salmon nachos?” Wendy suggested, perusing her menu. “Looks like they have your favorite Peanut Butter Brownie Surprise for dessert too. Anything else?”
Rescued by Her Rival Page 17
