Shuffling her booted feet through the snow on the sidewalk, she raised her face, letting the cold wind caress her cheeks. But she didn’t remember the walk home or unlocking the door. Inside the apartment, despite the warmth, she felt cold. Keeping her jacket on, she stared out the living-room window for a long time and watched the snowflakes fall.
She’d thought she was protecting Austin from the hurt, the disappointment, the heartache he would feel if Jack let him down, if Jack abandoned Austin when he tired of playing daddy.
All along she’d believed, truly believed, that she only wanted to protect Austin. But from what was the big question. Jack had given Austin a father who loved and cared about him, who’d sit for an hour on the phone discussing a comic-book character or a Halloween costume. He’d given him a father who made a promise and kept it. Austin hadn’t needed protection from heartbreak.
Squeezing her eyes tight, she agonized. This wasn’t about Jack. This was about her father. When—when had her past gotten mixed up with her feelings for Jack? Why had it? On a long breath, she let the pain of honesty surge through her. She hadn’t been protecting Austin. She’d been protecting herself. If she didn’t believe in Jack, didn’t let herself accept him in her life, she didn’t risk being left again. She could keep herself safe.
She steadied herself with a long breath and finally stood. After removing her jacket, she wandered into the kitchen. She’d just set up the coffeemaker when behind her she heard the sound of muffled voices, then the click of the door opening.
“Mom, we’re home.” Austin rushed in, a scarf dangling from his hand. He frowned but said nothing about the door being unlocked.
So much needed to be said, Abby realized as she went through motions for Austin. She smiled at her son, bent down to kiss his cheek, even helped him remove his jacket before she made herself meet Jack’s eyes. She saw hurt in them and knew she was causing it.
Head bent, Austin unzipped his jacket. “Mom, we had so much fun.”
She looked at Jack instead of him. “You, too?”
“Me, too,” he answered easily. No matter what happened now, he didn’t regret coming, having this time with his son.
“We had a pie-eating contest.” Austin dropped a glove on the table, a scarf on the sofa.
Abby noticed Jack hadn’t left the doorway. He seemed more distant. Could she blame him? She’d been unfair. Terribly unfair. “What kind of pie?”
“Lemon meringue.”
She frowned at the trail of clothes he was leaving behind him. “You are picking all of them up, aren’t you?” she asked, pointing a finger at his discarded scarf and gloves.
As if he’d been asked to do something above and beyond the norm, he released a heavy sigh, but he did as expected and gathered up his clothes. “I’ll put them away,” he said before she could. Starting for his room, he stopped in midstride. “You haven’t seen my room, Dad. Want to?”
You’re here for Austin, Jack reminded himself. After what had happened earlier, for the first time since she’d left the ranch, he had doubts they could heal what was wrong between them. Not sure what to do about her, he did nothing. Instead, he gave Austin his attention. “Sure, I’d like to see it.” He’d already scanned the apartment. Neat but not immaculate, it was decorated in a homespun country look. “Lead the way.” Following Austin, he unzipped his jacket.
Clearly, Abby had worked hard to make the room a comfortable haven for Austin. From the dark blue ceiling with its painted stars to the posters of Captain Cosmo and the bedspread with its spaceship design, the room suited Austin perfectly.
“Do you like it?” Austin’s eyes were steady on him as if the future of the world rested on his answer.
“Sure do.” At the barn, waiting for the boy, was a bigger room with a view of the mountains, but without Abby’s touch, it would never be a home to Austin.
“Want to see something else?” He grabbed Jack’s hand. “We got to go back to the other room.”
As they left the bedroom, Austin released Jack’s hand and rushed across the living room. Jack stopped in the bedroom doorway to watch Abby, hunting for something in a laundry basket of unfolded clothes. “I like your apartment.”
“Thank you,” she replied. The world narrowed to the small space separating them. The ball was in her court, she knew.
“Do you want to see the scrapbook?” Austin cut in.
Scrapbook? Abby swung around to see him opening the entertainment-center cabinet. She hadn’t realized he even knew she’d done the scrapbook of newspaper and magazine clippings about Jack.
“It’s a scrapbook all about you,” Austin said while lifting the book. “I found it yesterday.”
It took a moment for Jack to grasp what he was talking about. By then, Austin was holding the leather-bound book out to him. He felt a catch in his heart as he opened the book, as he skimmed the pages filled with clippings. They began when he’d been in an Arizona rodeo during that first summer with Abby. “This is nice,” he said, noticing she even had several articles about the last rodeo he’d performed in.
Abby knew that no denying would work. The scrapbook symbolized that he’d always been a part of her life, always would be, unless she kept acting like a fool. In his hands was a token of the love that had started when she’d been much younger, still filled with expectations.
Jack set the book down. When he’d come, it had been for Austin. He hadn’t been sure after all these months if there was any chance for him and Abby. But he still ached for her, still longed to have her in his arms. Aware of Austin standing near, he took control of the moment, deciding he and Abby needed privacy. “Austin, why don’t you find that trading card of Qwiwala,” he said about one of Captain Cosmo’s buddies.
“You want to see it?”
Jack kept his hand on the scrapbook. Its very existence touched him. “I’d really like to,” he said, not taking his eyes off Abby. He couldn’t let her pull away from him again.
“Be right back.”
Abby watched Austin dash into his room. They wouldn’t have a lot of time alone.
“I’ve been so wrong,” she began. How could she explain her own confusion? “You’d done everything you could to prove you meant what you’d said, that you were staying at the ranch.” She steadied herself with a long breath. “You’d offered me marriage and a home for our son, everything I could want. And still I kept expecting you to let him down.” Her heart quickened to a light, fluttery beat with her steps toward him. “But this wasn’t about you. That’s what I didn’t understand. This was about my father. I never forgave or forgot what my father did to me and my mother.”
He hadn’t expected those words. Jack brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek
It would have been so easy to fall into his arms and say no more, but she knew she couldn’t do that. “I guess I’ve been trying to protect myself from the kind of hurt I felt when he wasn’t around anymore.” A look of understanding in his eyes encouraged her to go on. “After he left us, she—we followed him. My mother moved us around. Wherever he went, wherever he got a job playing with a band, we would go. I doubt he even knew we were near. I don’t know what she thought would happen. Maybe she believed if we were close, then he could come back at any time.”
She paused, but now wasn’t the time to falter. “She never gave up. Foolishly. She never stopped hoping he’d come back to us.” Abby recalled nights when she’d heard her mother crying. “She kept saying that he’d promised to come back. I wonder now if he ever did promise. Maybe she just kept hoping. I don’t know. But I knew that I never wanted to go through that again, never would let myself be left again. Then I did. With you.”
Jack’s gut clenched. Oh, God, what he’d done to her. It all made more sense to him now. She’d known a childhood with a woman who never let her forget that the man they’d loved had left them. And then he’d done the same thing. So when he’d finally gotten his head on straight and wanted what Abby did, she was afraid to believe in hi
m, believe in them.
“It hurt so badly,” she admitted. Jack’s leaving had forced too many painful memories on her of that time in her life. “Jack, she never let go of the past and neither had I. I kept letting it control my life.”
He didn’t need her to say more. He saw in the moist darkness of her eyes the warmth of love. “Come here.” As Abby took another step, he dragged her closer. “I love you. I always have.”
Abby released the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “And I love you.” She trembled with emotion, closing her eyes and absorbing the feel of his arms around her, the heat of his mouth on hers. Her heart open and welcoming, she pressed her cheek to his, and she clung. “And I’m sorry. I’m so—so sorry. Jack, I don’t want to live in the past anymore. I want to think about now, tomorrow with Austin—and you, if you still want both of us.”
He smiled in a wry, familiar way that tugged at her heart. “How could you even doubt that?” He’d spent some lonely nights awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what went wrong. He’d never planned to give up. His son and the woman he loved belonged with him. But for a while, he’d been stymied about how to make that happen.
In the blue eyes staring down at her, she saw the truth in his words. “I’m lucky you’re so stubborn. Any other man would have given up on me by now. And I’d have lost so much.” Need swarming in on her, she met his mouth again. Long and deep, the kiss bound them, and in the lips moving over hers, she felt the tenderness and the love that she’d blocked from her heart for too long.
With emotion flooding him, Jack forced himself to ease back before he forgot where they were and how close Austin was. “Tell me what you want.”
Abby spoke from her heart as joy hummed through her. “You,” she whispered close to his mouth.
Jack released a laugh. “I’d like to believe that’s all you need to make you happy, but let’s get serious.”
The solemn look on his face stirred her smile.
Tempted by silky strands, Jack toyed with one curving her jaw. He wanted her to spell it out, needed a confirmation that all he’d hoped for with her would be a reality. “Will you marry me?”
Abby didn’t hesitate. “Yes, yes,” she said, giving him a quick kiss between her laughter.
“I know it’s a lot to ask of you. But I have to stay at the ranch. I have responsibilities there.”
“Austin said he misses the rooster.”
Jack returned her smile. He wanted her to see the same future he’d begun to imagine, but she deserved to have all she wanted, too. “I know the local newspaper is small-time compared to the one you work on, but Orlon would probably be thrilled to have someone with your experience.”
She knew that was true. Orlon had even offered her a position.
“Or you could write a book,” he added. “You said you’d like to do that someday. Remember?”
He’d stunned her. She’d mentioned that only once, eight years ago.
“Whatever you decide is all right with me.”
“I’ll figure that out later.” Abby traced his lips with a fingertip. His smile slowly formed, but he was looking past her. With a glance back over her shoulder, she saw Austin peeking out of the bedroom.
Keeping his one arm around Abby’s waist, Jack opened his other arm to his son. Austin’s eyes widened, then without a word spoken, he dashed to them. They were complete now, Jack thought as he caught Austin at the waist and lifted him up. “This time’s forever, Abby.”
Her heart pounding, she let the softness of his voice and those words float over her. Yes, forever.
“We have only one thing to do before we go home,” he said to both of them.
Happiness bubbling within her, Abby glanced at Austin, wondering if he knew what Jack was talking about. He looked as puzzled as she was. “What’s that?”
Jack winked at her, then met his son’s eyes. “We need to pick up a dog.”
“A dog!” Austin’s voice raised an octave. “A real dog?”
“A puppy,” Jack suggested, because then the dog would be Austin’s and grow with him.
Exhilaration squeaked his young voice. “A puppy! A puppy, Mom. We’re going to get a puppy. Is that great?”
Laughing, she coiled an arm around Jack’s neck. “Perfect.”
“He wants a baby brother, too,” Jack murmured.
Surprised, Abby drew back. “A brother?”
Jack grinned. “What do you think of that idea?”
Abby didn’t hesitate. “I love the idea.”
With the sound of her son’s giggle in her ear, she pressed her mouth to Jack’s for a kiss. In it, she felt passion. And she felt a promise of forever.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-6027-6
FOREVER MINE
Copyright © 1999 by Suzanne Kuhlin
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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