“My selection of trees is a little on the thin side,” Melissa said apologetically as she led the way through the nursery to a secured area outside. “Most of my customers special-order, and I keep only a few extras on hand. Here they are.”
The trees she indicated ranged in size from four feet to ten and in color from the blue-green hue of a blue spruce to rich green. Maggie admired the littlest tree even as she thought about all the years of growth it would require to be as impressive as the others. But what did a few years matter? She would be there.
Once she turned her attention to the other trees, it took only a moment to make her choice. It was the biggest tree there and was as full at the bottom as it was tall. The branches were strong enough to support the most treasured of her ornaments, the needles weren’t prickly, and its scent—with a hint of orange—was heavenly.
Brushing her hand over it, she glanced at Ross. “This one?”
He nodded—not exactly the response she was looking for. She wanted him to agree, of course—she could love this tree for its fragrance even if it wasn’t perfect—but would it have hurt him to at least walk around it one time to check its shape? Would it hurt him to show a passing interest?
He had promised her companionship, she reminded herself. Not interest. She should accept what she was getting and be grateful, because he wasn’t going to offer more.
And she was grateful. These nearly two weeks in Bethlehem would have been wonderful without his companionship, but not quite as much. She owed him a lot for this gift of his time.
But it was only natural to want more, and before long she would have it. Just not with him.
Shifting away from the thought, she flashed a smile at Melissa. “We’ll take this one. Can we get it delivered?”
“No problem. The guys are going out with a delivery today. They can bring it by sometime this afternoon.” Melissa pulled a tag and pen from the apron underneath her coat and handed it to Maggie. “Just write your name and address on there, and I’ll add it to the delivery order.”
Maggie braced the paper on her knee to write their name, then looked at Ross again. “I don’t know our address.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then shrugged. “I don’t either.”
When they both turned to Melissa, the other woman laughed. “Don’t ask me. I certainly don’t know. Just put ‘the brick house on the corner of Hawthorne and Fourth.’ These guys have lived here all their lives. They’ll find it.”
Once the tagging process was finished, they returned to the nursery and the cash register near the door. “Tell me, Maggie,” Melissa said as she figured the sale. “Do you sing?”
Maggie burst into laughter. “Only to myself. You must be working to start—” She gave an exasperated shake of her head. “Starting to work on the church pageant.”
“Yes, and as usual, I’m in need of a little divine intervention. I’ve got backstage help coming out my ears. The speaking roles were taken the first day. Even singers aren’t hard to find. It’s just the soloists I have to beg for.” She looked measuringly at Ross. “Do you sing?”
He looked as startled as if she’d asked him to unbind his wings and fly away. “Sing?” he repeated blankly. “Out loud? In front of people?”
“I’ll take that as a definite no.”
Maggie was amused by his response. Actually, his voice was as pleasant in song as it was in speech—a baritone, nice and rich. Once upon a time, neither of them had thought twice about singing along with the radio or going a cappella in the shower. Now he listened mostly to songs without words, and as for the shower … It’d been a long time since they’d shared a bathroom. She didn’t have a clue.
Melissa told Ross the total, and he wrote her a check. “I hope you enjoy your tree,” she said. Then, before they could turn from the counter, she asked, “Maggie, how about lunch at the inn Monday?”
“I’d like that.”
“Do you want to meet there, or should I pick you up?”
Maggie glanced out the door at the Mercedes in the parking lot. If she wanted, she could have it for her own, Ross had told her the day he’d picked her up at the rehab center, but she hadn’t given it any thought. She hadn’t felt the slightest temptation to reacquaint herself with the pleasures of driving. Even Josie Dalton’s incredulity hadn’t prompted her to consider it.
But a simple lunch invitation might.
“I—I’ll get there,” she said carelessly.
“Around noon?”
“That sounds fine.” With a wave she walked out the door Ross was holding for her.
“You know, you drove tens of thousands of miles without ever having even a minor fender-bender,” he commented as they approached the car.
“And I drove less than five miles from home and almost killed myself.”
“The weather was bad. The road was icy. It could have happened to anyone.”
“But it happened to me.”
He stopped behind the car and held out his hand. The keys dangled from their ring, swaying hypnotically. “The keys to independence,” he said, then the teasing disappeared. “You’ve got to give it a try sometime, Maggie. Why not today?”
“There’s snow on the ground.”
“On the ground. Not on the streets.”
She looked at the keys again and thought about taking them, about walking around to the driver’s side, sliding behind the wheel, starting the engine. She thought about driving through the streets of Bethlehem as she’d done last Christmas Eve, and then about rolling violently down the mountainside. The muscles in her stomach clenched, and an ache began to throb behind her eyes.
Without saying a word she walked to the passenger side and waited for him to unlock the door.
When he joined her in the car, the look he gave her was sympathetic. “It’s okay, Maggie. You’ve got plenty of time.”
She turned away to stare out the side window. What had she thought that Christmas Eve night when the truck began its skid? Had she worried about the impending damage to her vehicle? Had she realized in those first few seconds that the damage to her could be far more extensive? Had she suspected that she might not survive, or had unconsciousness come too quickly for such morbid thoughts?
“You don’t have to drive at all. We can make arrangements—”
“Do you know where it happened?”
Her question startled him into silence. He delayed answering by starting the engine, adjusting the heat, locking the doors. Finally he said, “Yes, I do.”
“Show me.”
Again he delayed before responding. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion, did I?” She regretted her sharp tone immediately when she saw the way his mouth tightened, but she couldn’t bring herself to apologize. The other was more important. “I want to see it.”
“There’s nothing to see, Maggie. Just the highway and rocks and trees.”
“I want to see.”
For a while she thought he would refuse. After all, what could she do about it? Go without him? Of the two of them, only he knew the location. Only he had the courage to drive. Then, angrily, he relented, shifted into gear, and left the parking lot.
The anger remained between them through town and up the mountain. It guided his movements when suddenly he pulled to the side of the road where the shoulder was wider and shut off the engine. It colored his voice when he finally spoke. “This is the place. I remember the vehicles parked here and on that road.”
He gestured, and she looked at the lane on her right. It extended twenty feet off the roadway, then ended in a pile of dirt.
“There’s a cabin down there.” Again he gestured, this time to the opposite side. “You can’t see it from here, but the man who lives there heard the crash. He investigated and called it in. The first deputy on the scene called the sheriff, who came to the house to notify me. We could see all the emergency lights from down below. There were sheriffs’ cars, wreckers, an ambul
ance, a fire truck, and the rescue truck. When we got here, they were just bringing you up. There were so many people working on you at once that I couldn’t see a thing.”
She tried to re-create the scene in her mind—a cold, snowy night. Red, blue, and amber lights casting colored shadows on the snow. A frantic rescue effort. A victim more dead than alive.
“I could see what was left of the truck in the ravine, and I thought there was no way on earth you could have survived.”
His voice was so flat, so dark, it made Maggie shiver. “It would have been easier for you if I hadn’t.”
His head jerked around, and his eyes made contact with hers. He looked shocked. Stricken. “How can you say that? How can you even think that? My God, Maggie …”
She felt guilty even as she gave a careless shrug. “My medical care over the last year must have come to more than a million dollars. Your life has been in limbo, now more than ever. You’re facing a divorce and giving up some of that fortune you’ve worked so hard for. If I had died, other than giving the public appearance of mourning, you would have been free to live exactly the way you wanted. It would have been much more convenient for you.”
He stared at her a moment longer, then turned away so that she barely caught his whispered words. “Damn you.”
The headache that had started back at the nursery worsened. She ignored it, and the edginess that rippled through her, and unfastened her seat belt. Her fingers didn’t want to work right, but finally she managed to free herself and left the car.
It was colder up there than it was in the valley. The wind blew harder, whipping her hair around her face. If she had any sense, she would get back in the car, apologize to Ross, and ask him to take her home. But then she would just have to come back some other time—she knew that—so she might as well get it over with then.
There was no traffic in sight in either direction. Shoving her hands into her pockets, she crossed the road to stand on the narrow shoulder on the opposite side. There were a dozen places along the road where a person could drive off, fall no more than twenty feet, and walk away with a few bruises or less. But not her. No, she’d had the misfortune to fall into a deep, steep ravine.
Ross had been right. There was nothing to see but the road, rocks, and trees. Some of the rocks were scarred. So were some of the trees, with great gashes ripped across their trunks. Smaller trees lay uprooted, and the earth showed where one large boulder had been forcibly moved a half dozen feet from its original resting place.
So this was it. This was the place where she had almost lost her life, where instead she’d been given a second chance.
She drew a deep breath of frigid mountain air, held it a moment, blew it out again. Turning, she saw Ross standing beside the car and took a step, then went down on one knee as the world spun around her. He called her name, then his legs—three of them?—appeared in front of her an instant before he lifted her to her feet. Without thought she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply of clean air, pine, and masculine cologne—slow, measured breaths intended to ease the pain in her head and the unsteadiness that had claimed her body.
The breathing would work, if only he’d quit trying to push her away, to hold her back far enough that he could see, and stop talking. “Maggie, what’s wrong? Are you okay? What’s—”
Blindly she raised one hand to his mouth. “Shhh. Give me a minute.”
He fell silent and did exactly what she needed—simply held her. His leather jacket was cold beneath her cheek, his body solid. For years simply being held by him had been one of her greatest pleasures. She’d always felt so safe in his arms, so protected, so loved.
Today two out of three wasn’t bad.
It was just unbearably sad.
With one last breath she lifted her head, straightened her shoulders, and gently pulled free of his embrace. He let her step back, but he held tightly to her arms. “I’m okay. I just got a little dizzy. The atti—altitude, you know.”
He looked as if he didn’t believe her, and he was right not to. The difference in altitude there near the top of the mountain and down below in the valley wasn’t substantial enough to cause dizziness, but it was a nice pretense to blame one of her problems on something that affected a lot of people rather than on her damaged brain.
When he continued to stare at her with such intense concern, she forced another smile. “I’m all right, Ross, honestly. I just have a headache, and sometimes that brings on a dizzy spell. But I’m fine now. I’d just like to go home.”
He still didn’t look convinced, but he escorted her to the car and hovered there while she settled in the seat. Once he joined her, she laid her head back and closed her eyes. She didn’t open them again until they reached the house.
He took her upstairs to her room. “Where are the pain pills Dr. Allen gave you?” he asked.
“I’ll get them. I’m headed to the bathroom anyway.” She left him lowering the blinds and closed the bathroom door behind her. The pills were in a small bottle in the linen closet, secreted behind a pile of towels. She had no intention of taking them. Only one would put her out for the afternoon and leave her feeling groggy and disoriented for the rest of the evening. She didn’t want that, not when she had a Christmas tree to decorate. Just a few aspirin and a few hours sleep, and she would be fine.
When she returned to her room, he’d turned down the covers and was waiting with a scowl. “We shouldn’t have gone up there.”
“Yes, we should have. I needed to see it.” She kicked off her shoes, stripped off her jeans. In the dimly lit room, wearing a sweater that came to mid-thigh and suffering a headache that made her feel weak, she felt neither modest nor self-conscious.
As she settled in bed, he started to leave. She spoke before he got too far. “Ross? I never, ever believed that you wanted me to die.”
His expression when he turned back was wary. “Then why did you say that?”
“I said it would have been easier for you. Not that it was what you wanted.”
He came to stand at the end of the bed, his hands gripping the curved wood so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “We had an argument that night. You left the house because of me. You were on that road in that weather because of me. Do you understand, Maggie? You almost died because of me.” His voice rose, sharpened, and he made an obvious effort to control it. “There would have been nothing easy about that. It would have destroyed me.”
With that, he walked away, leaving her alone.
Chapter Nine
Once upon a time, decorating the Christmas tree had been a special event in the McKinney home, Ross mused as he studied the tree three teenage boys had delivered two hours before. Back then, he and Maggie had ignored the phone and any unexpected guests who might drop by. They’d shut off the television, put carols on the stereo, and spent the entire evening getting all the lights and all the ornaments just right. Dinner was simple and intimate—sandwiches, chips, something freshly baked for dessert—capped off with Irish coffee or mulled cider.
And when they’d finished, when the food was gone and the decorations were hung, they’d turned off the lights to admire their handiwork. Inevitably one of them had made a move—a touch, a kiss. One particularly memorable year Maggie had made a minute adjustment to their first-Christmas-together ornament, then simply, boldly, erotically, removed her clothes before approaching him, and he—
Scowling, he shoved the memory away. All that was past. It had no bearing on the present. Though they would work together that night—there was no way he was letting her get on a ladder after what had happened today—it wouldn’t be the same. There would be little laughter if any, and little sense of sharing. No intimate dinner, no freshly baked dessert, no Irish coffee.
And certainly no making love. No laying Maggie down naked on that handloomed rug in front of the tree. No sliding inside her the way he’d done hundreds of times before. No losing himself there the way
he had every one of those hundreds of times.
His jaw tightened—and so did his body. He didn’t want her. It was just the power of old memories and the curse of having gone a very long time without sex. It didn’t matter that she was beautiful, that they’d been married a long time and were still married. He didn’t want her. Couldn’t have her.
Couldn’t.
He moved toward the tree. The boys had set it up in the same place last year’s tree had stood, in front of the large windows that looked out on the street. It filled the space, stretching toward the ceiling and over-whelming the room with its fragrance. He hoped Maggie wanted it there, because there was no way the two of them alone would be able to move it.
She’d slept soundly all afternoon. Neither the doorbell nor the three boys had disturbed her. He’d checked as soon as they were gone, and she was still curled on her side, breathing deeply. For a longer time than he could justify, he’d stood beside the bed and watched her. He had deliberately blanked his mind—had refused to think, to feel—and had simply stood there while she slept, and in spite of his best intentions, he’d felt something anyway. Hurt. Lost. Afraid.
The hell of it was, he wasn’t sure what he was afraid of. The marriage ending? He was prepared for that, had been for a long time. Maggie no longer being a part of his life? She had been only a very small part for several years. The truth coming out?
His smile was thin, its bitter mockery directed at himself. He’d been afraid of that from the beginning. From the first moment he’d realized that he was actually going to bed with a woman other than Maggie, he’d feared the truth, the pain, the anger. He had hoped desperately that she would never find out, but in the end, after all the lies and careful subterfuge, he had been the one to reveal his own sins. One careless act, and Maggie had known everything. That night she had paid the price.
Then he had hoped she would never know. Now he prayed that she would never remember. Maybe it was stupid—certainly it was selfish—but some small, vain part of him liked knowing that she thought him a better man than he was. It meant something that after all they’d gone through, she still believed in him. He didn’t want to destroy her faith a second time, didn’t want to see the scorn and revulsion once again darken her eyes, to know he’d hurt her once more.
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