The Wrong Man

by Laura Abbot

  She bent her head to her knees, hugging her legs to her chest almost as if she sought to make herself invisible. What was she thinking? What was she feeling?

  At last she raised her head. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  He rested his hand on her knee. “You never will know if we don’t try again. I think something powerful is going on between us.” He picked up one of her hands and kissed her fingers. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

  She withdrew her hand from his. “Please, Trent. Don’t touch me.”

  At first her words struck him like a blow, but then he studied her eyes. Beyond the fear lay something else, burning intensely. “Lib, what is it?”

  She rested her forehead on her knees again. He waited, not moving, scarcely daring to breathe.

  “I’m afraid.” He inclined his head to hear her whispered words. “I don’t ever want to feel that way again.”

  “What way?” he asked, brushing his hand through her hair.

  “Alone.”

  Mournful, the word reached a place deep within him.

  “Tell me about it,” he said, lifting her chin and rubbing his thumb over the ridge of her cheekbone. Then, when all resistance seemed to drain out of her, he pulled her across his lap, cradling her to his chest, reminding himself that gentleness and understanding were the keys. “Start at the beginning, darlin’. Take all the time you need.”

  She burrowed into his neck while he made gentle circling motions on her back. At last, with a shuddering sigh, she began. “It all started when my mother died.”

  Then came an outpouring of stories about a grief-stricken little girl who never felt she belonged. Not with her cold stepfather in a rambling house and not at school, where the stigma of not having a “real family” made it hard to make friends. Stories about her fantasy world in which a mother and father walked straight out of a greeting-card commercial, and rosy-cheeked babies romped and played. Then, haltingly, about meeting Trent—her Prince Charming.

  He gave a bitter laugh. “Some Prince Charming, huh?”

  She slipped off his lap and sat cross-legged, looking at him. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said quietly. “I expected too much.”

  “And I gave too little.”

  She picked up his hand and held it in her lap. “I don’t know how we can overcome the past.”

  A question seized him. “Why didn’t we ever talk about these things…back then?”

  “I don’t know.” Libby inclined her head, deep in thought. “Fear of exposure, maybe. I’ve always resisted revisiting my old life in Oklahoma. I suppose, in my starry-eyed optimism, I thought I’d found everything I’d ever needed in you.”

  “I probably wasn’t a very good listener.”

  She managed a wan smile. “I didn’t give you much of a chance.”

  “Maybe that’s where the answer lies, Lib.”

  “Answer to what?”

  “How we overcome the past. By talking. Everyone has always accused me of being a risk-taker. And that’s true in most things. But there’s one thing I’ve never risked with you, and only with Ashley when it was too late—when she was dying.”

  “What’s that?”

  These were the single most difficult words he’d ever uttered. “My vulnerability.”

  She stared at him, eyes glistening, and raised her hand as if she wanted to reach out to him. “Could you? Now?”

  He’d clamped his knees to a bull’s flanks, he’d leaped off a cliff, secured only by a belay, and he’d guided a kayak through roaring rapids. That was child’s play compared with this. He picked up her hand and held it between his. “Yes.”

  Once he began to speak, the exhilaration and satisfaction of an eight-second ride, a successful rappel or a wild river run paled in comparison with the reward he saw on Libby’s face.

  Love.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHY HAD SHE NEVER HEARD any of this before? Libby was seeing not the devil-may-care man’s man of their marriage, but a little boy broken by abandonment, determined never again to let anyone get close enough to hurt him. As she listened to him explaining how desperately he had sought his father’s approval, the pain in his words broke her heart.

  “Nothing was ever good enough,” he said. “I should’ve hated him. But I didn’t.” He rubbed a thumb across the back of her hand. “Not until after he walked out. At first, I thought he’d left because of something I had done wrong. That it was all my fault. If only I had said the right thing, done the right thing, he would’ve stayed. With time, I realized he wasn’t coming back, and that he didn’t give a damn about Mom or me. Maybe never had. That’s when I got angry. I decided to show the son of a bitch. I would be the best damn rider, hiker, kayaker, skier, you name it, that ever came along.” He paused, lost in reflection. “I made up my mind no one would ever hurt me again.” He gave a rueful shake of his head.

  “Ironic, huh? You don’t live this life and escape hurting.”

  He closed his eyes, obviously thinking about Ashley and, Libby hoped, their lost baby. “No, Trent, you don’t.” For the first time it struck her that maybe they had unconsciously set conditions on their love. She’d done it to protect herself from her lonely, anguished childhood, and he to buttress himself against rejection and fear of failure.

  When she uncrossed her legs and moved closer, settling into the curve of his arm, he opened his eyes. “That sounds self-serving and melodramatic, I suppose.”

  “Not at all. Looking back, I suppose we were both scarred and had something to prove—me to be the perfect parent and you to conquer the world.”

  “And we didn’t communicate worth a damn.” A sexy grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Except in bed.”

  Her mouth grew dry and a fluttery feeling drifted from her throat to somewhere between her legs. “Let’s not go there tonight, Trent.”

  The grin broadened. “Some other night?”

  She hadn’t intended her remark to be taken literally, but she was helpless to stop both the vivid mental picture his words evoked and the acceleration from fluttery feeling to outright throbbing. Finally she found her voice. “Trent, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  He kissed her temple. “I know, but it doesn’t sound like a bad idea, does it?”

  She dared to look up at him. A bad idea? It sounded heavenly. If only this could be simply about sex.

  When she didn’t immediately answer, he spoke again. “We pledged Kylie the truth. Give me the truth, Lib.”

  “Don’t do this to me,” she pleaded, clutching the front of his wool shirt.

  His lips were against her cheek, his breath warm, spicy. “Do what?”

  Her answer came out as a squeak. “Tempt me.”

  He turned her face so she had nowhere to look except into his depthless eyes. “Like this?” His arms came around her and he caught her lips, gradually deepening the kiss until she was lost in a white-water vortex, powerless to surface. One hand slid beneath her loose sweatshirt, igniting sparks up and down her spine. She writhed against him, burying her fingers in those curls she had longed to touch again since that day he had first walked into her classroom.

  He broke the kiss and nipped a line of fire along her neck. She should stop this now. Halt the trail of desire leading from just below her ear to her swollen breasts. But with a mind of their own, her hands framed his face and she pulled his mouth to hers, their tongues mingling in a wild, and familiar, dance.

  It’s been so long, a voice cried in her head. Then there was nothing but blissful sensation rocketing through her body.

  Just when she thought she must surely die from pleasure, he gently cradled her in the crook of his arm and smiled at her so lovingly her breath caught. “I think you’ve given me the truth, darlin’.”

  A part of her wanted to hide her head in shame. Like dry tinder to a match, she’d exploded at his first touch. But he was right. There was an important truth here. “You still set me on fire.”

  He brushed
a stray lock of hair off her forehead. “But there’s more to it now, isn’t there? Friendship, commitment, sharing. Can we try? Please?”

  “I can’t help being scared.”

  “Trust me, Lib. This time I won’t let you down.”

  She tucked her head into the hollow of his neck, sensing the steady beating of his heart beneath her palm. “Okay,” she finally said, all the pent-up breath leaving her body. “We’ll try.”

  HEEDLESS OF the heavy snow falling, Trent sat behind the wheel of his truck waiting for the engine to warm up and the heater to kick in. He had a chance! Exultation alone warmed him more than the feeble drafts coming from the vent.

  It had taken sheer willpower to tear himself away, when what he had really wanted was to carry her off to her bedroom and spend the night entwined in her arms, burying himself in her. But he had to prove to her that their attraction had moved to a new level, one beyond mere sexual compatibility or immature notions about what a relationship entailed.

  Having a teenage baby-sitter had given him a reason to leave, or he might have succumbed to the fierce urgings driving his body. Hell, he was hard now just thinking about the way the evening might have concluded.

  But something more important than his immediate satisfaction had happened. They had finally talked. He had finally talked. Rather than threatening him, he’d discovered that unburdening himself had been liberating, and although it had twisted his gut to hear about the miscarriage, he had discovered that he wanted to absorb Libby’s pain, not deflect it. Something that never would have happened all those years ago. That didn’t happen.

  They had lost so much. Misunderstood so much.

  He put the truck in four-wheel drive and edged out into the road, the glare of his headlights piercing the thick blanket of falling snow.

  Trust me, he’d said. As he drove through the white night, he promised himself he would never again disappoint her.

  LIBBY COULDN’T SLEEP. She didn’t know why she even tried, except that tomorrow was a school day. After staring at the luminous dial of her alarm clock for one excruciating minute after the next, she rose from the bed, put on her robe and sheepskin-lined slippers, grabbed an extra blanket and settled in the living-room window seat with Mona, watching huge snowflakes filter down through the haze of the street lamp.

  Important things had been said tonight. Trent had always been her knight—handsome, invincible, daring. Would it have made a difference in their marriage if he had been able to reveal the cracks in his armor then? Or had she needed a man confident to the point of cockiness? Had it been naive of her to expect him to embrace her pregnancy with the same enthusiasm she had? And, by extension, mourn as she had?

  She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them. What innocents they had been! He had understood no more than she about the kind of work it took to build a good marriage. No wonder. Neither of them had grown up with helpful role models. With her thumb, she rubbed her empty ring finger, feeling something beyond pain and loss. Now in that place where bitterness had festered for so long, forgiveness grew. For that needy young woman and vulnerable young man.

  How blissful it would be to leave it at that. But Trent was asking more of her. Tempted as she had been by the way he could make her ache for fulfillment, she was grateful that he had stopped before they ended up in bed. He had shown her he understood that this time their relationship had to be about much more than physical attraction, no matter how powerful.

  She caught herself. This time? She had known in some subconscious part of her mind that she had made her decision about Trent even before tonight. A second chance, yes, but also a final chance.

  When she stretched out her legs, Mona curled up in her lap, warming her to the core. There were so many unknowns. Had he really changed? Were his overtures more about securing a stepmother for Kylie than about his feelings for her? Was this enterprise with Chad yet one more in a string of dead-end jobs? Had she been blinded by lust tonight? In the cold light of day, would she truly be able to move beyond the hurt he’d inflicted on her back then? Open herself to it again? What if they remarried and she got pregnant? Had he really reformed?

  Yet even as she raised the questions, she realized she had to take the chance. She could either step forward in trust or retreat to the safety of the known and, in the process, risk missing out on the great love of her life.

  She buried her face in Mona’s soft fur. Because that’s what Trent had always been—her great love. And could be again.

  The wind picked up, rattling around the house and blowing drifts across her driveway. She had tried so hard with Doug. Even now, giving up the security he and his family represented was almost impossible to contemplate. Warm, accepting Mary. Doug’s dad, who had embraced her as a daughter from the very beginning. His sisters, who could in time become her best friends, and his witty brother. But Doug himself?

  He deserved more. As desperately as she tried, she had not been able to love him in the way that she knew deep inside a woman should love a mate. And if she was honest, she had always known why.

  She had never stopped loving Trent.

  There was no other option but to break off her relationship with Doug. “Mona, Mona, what can I possibly say to him?”

  Trust me, Trent had urged.

  She now knew how an aerialist must feel performing for the first time without a net.

  “WHADDYA THINK?” Chad stood back so that Trent could see the display board and banner they’d had made for the outdoor exposition to be held in March at the arena in Kalispell. Green lettering on a buff background gave the display a natural, outdoorsy look.

  Trent grinned. “It captures us.”

  Chad eyed his handiwork. “It better. We have a lot at stake.”

  Trent set down the mountaineer’s rope he’d been coiling. “Seriously, it’s great. I know all this has to be done, but to tell you the truth, I can’t wait for clients and heading out on the adventures we claim to specialize in.”

  “Libby not adventure enough for you?” Chad asked shrewdly.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “The sappy look on your face ever since you arrived this morning. I don’t suppose you’re aware you’ve rearranged the same display twice?”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  “Like a neon sign, my friend.” Chad began folding up the banner. “So what gives?”

  Trent didn’t want to say too much. After last night, he was optimistic, but the last thing he wanted to do was jinx the situation with Lib. He settled for understatement. “I may have my foot in the door.”

  “May? Foot in the door? That doesn’t sound like the same guy who did the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim hike in one day.”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve mellowed. Subtlety. Patience.”

  “And a whole lot of charm?”

  “That, too,” Trent replied smugly.

  Chad clapped him on the back. “Hang in there. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

  Trent didn’t say what he was thinking. Me, too. Instead he gave an ambivalent nod. Too much was riding on the next few weeks to get overconfident, and last night had been too special, too new to talk about.

  Whistling under his breath, he worked on their fly-fishing display until he was interrupted by a phone call. When he heard the voice on the other end, he rubbed his temples, then collapsed into the desk chair.

  “Yes, hello, Georgia. What can I do for you?”

  Although she called periodically at home to check on her granddaughter, his former mother-in-law had never called him at work before. “Is everything all right?”

  “It depends upon what you mean by ‘all right.’”

  The chill in her voice put Trent on full alert. He waited.

  “We talked to Kylie last night.”

  Nothing unusual about that. Kylie had mentioned the call this morning, delighted her grandmother was sending her yet another Barbie doll. “She’s doing better in school,” he offered.

  �
�She really likes her teacher, right? Uh, Miss Cameron, I believe?”

  “They get along very well. The help she’s giving Kylie in reading is really making a difference.”

  “Nice.” Her tone was anything but approving.

  Again he waited, and when nothing more was forthcoming, he said, “How’s Gus?”

  “Just as worried as I am.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “In fact, we’re planning to come there this weekend to check things out for ourselves.”

  He had reached the end of his tether. “Georgia, what in blazes are you talking about?”

  “Your lady friend.”

  He jumped from his chair. “My what?”

  “You heard me. Kylie went on for quite a while. She told me that you and her teacher had been married before. And she can tell you like each other. Let me recall exactly how Kylie put it. Oh, yes, you like each other ‘like in the movies when people are in love,’ and she hastened to assure us it will be only a short time before she has a new stepmother.”

  The bluebird of happiness had just crapped in his nest. “Georgia, she’s gotten way ahead of herself—”

  “Is it true?”

  “Which part?”

  “Do you have a relationship with this woman?”

  Trent paced the length of the office. He’d known the Chisholms might be hurt by his deep feelings for Libby, but circumstances hadn’t yet warranted a discussion with them. Until now. Luckily, bullet-biting was a talent he had perfected in his youth. “I hope to, yes.”

  He heard the clack of her long, manicured fingernails on the receiver. “Expect us tomorrow evening. And, Trent?”

  “Yes?”

  “Gus and I are not happy about this development. Kylie has just lost her mother. Your relationship with this woman is irresponsible and not in Kylie’s best interests.”

  “I would never do anything to—”

  “We will be staying at the Alpine Lodge. We’ll expect you around eight. By yourself. I’m sure you’ll come to your senses, and we can settle all this then. Goodbye.”