For Now, for Always

by Lynn Turner

  “He hurt you badly, didn’t he?” Paul asked softly.

  “He nearly destroyed me,” she answered, and was surprised at how calm her voice sounded.

  “Can you tell me?” he murmured close to her ear.

  Lacey shook her head. “No. If you’re my friend, you won’t ask, Paul.”

  He hugged her shoulders briefly, “All right. Did he divorce you, or was it the other way around?”

  Lacey gave a short, cynical laugh. “Neither. He wouldn’t—it would be an admission of failure, and he never fails at anything. And I couldn’t. If I’d filed a divorce petition, he’d have found out where I was, and I was terrified he might come after me. I lived like a criminal for years, Paul, hiding out, scared half to death he’d find out about the boys and try to take them away from me. Try?” she repeated bitterly. “He wouldn’t have just tried, he’d have done it. He has the money and the high-priced legal talent, and at that time he’d have done anything to hurt me.”

  Paul frowned again, but didn’t comment on the fact that she’d just informed him she was still a married woman. “But, Lacey,” he said on a note of anxiety, “if you never divorced him, mightn’t he still try to take them? If he is as ruthless and vengeful as you say—”

  “No,” she said with conviction. “I’m not a scared girl anymore, Paul. I’m a successful businesswoman, a respected member of this community. I could prove in any court of law that I can provide for them as well as or better than he could, and if he dared to question my fitness as a mother, I could come up with plenty of witnesses on my behalf. He’s shrewd enough to see atl that. Neil Hartmann doesn’t take on lost causes. Still,” she murmured on a sigh, “I’d rather he didn’t even know ^bout the boys. He might make trouble, and I don’t want to see them hurt. Oh damn, why did he have to come back here?”

  “Did you ask him that?”

  Lacey looked up with a regretful smile. “Somehow I didn’t think of it. But I will, if he really shows up with a check for the Miller farm in the morning. I can’t quite see Neil in a pair of bib overalls.”

  But he did show up, check in hand, at nine-thirty the next morning. Ellen showed him into Lacey’s office with a triumphant grin, then closed the door on her way out. Probably so she and Vi can indulge in some speculation without being overheard, Lacey thought as Neil casually seated himself. He flicked the check across the desk at her, but Lacey didn’t pick it up.

  “So you’re really serious about buying,” she remarked with open skepticism.

  “Good morning. It’s nice to see you again, too.” Neil grinned as he leaned back and crossed his legs, “Have lunch with me today. We’ll drive out to that lounge on Highway 1.”

  His lazy assurance rankled Lacey. He looked as self-confident as ever, sitting there in an oyster-colored string-knit sweater and camel slacks, his feet shod in soft brown moccasins. If anything, the gray hair made him even more distinguished-looking, and the weight loss she’d noticed yesterday emphasized the strong planes and angles of his face. His unusual copper-hard eyes regarded her with a gleam of amusement as she finished her silent inventory.

  “I’d be glad to peel down and let you check out the rest, but you’ll have to lock the door,” he said in a mocking drawl.

  Blood rushed to Lacey’s cheeks, but the stare she leveled at him was cold enough to give him a case of frostbite. “I’ve got a better idea. I’ll step outside, and let Ellen and Vi come in to view your strip show. I’m sure they’d both appreciate your.. .maturity much more than I would.” Her eyes lifted to his hair as she smiled the last sentence.

  Neil’s lips twitched in amusement. “Mmm, well, I guess some of us age more gracefully than others. You, for instance. You’re more beautiful than ever, Lacey. You really.. .really look good.”

  His voice dropped on the last sentence, taking on a husky, deliberately sensual timbre. He’d always had a very seductive voice, Lacey remembered. It was deep and resonant, with an almost musical cadence at times that should have been incongruous, but wasn’t. But if he thought he could seduce her with that sexy bedroom voice, he had another think coming.

  “Why, thank you, Neil,” she murmured with a bland little smile, then followed through while he was still grappling with her apparent immunity. ‘Tell me, just out of curiosity, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Surprise replaced puzzlement in his eyes, while his features retained their impassivity. And then a smile slowly lifted the corners of his mouth. If his voice was seductive, his mouth was an outright invitation. She’d forgotten how tempting that mouth could be when he let it relax and softenl Lacey tore her gaze from his full lower lip and fought down the memory of how it had felt to have him love her with his mouth,

  “Well, well,” he murmured softly. “I do believe you’ve grown up.”

  “Oh, definitely. Are you going to answer my question?”

  He shrugged negligently, but the smile remained in place. “At the moment I’m buying a piece of real estate and waiting for you to accept my invitation to lunch, not necessarily in that order.”

  “Why?” Lacey insisted. She was beginning to lose patience with his pretense of good fellowship. Who did he think he was kidding7 He was so laid-back it was ludicrous! The words “leisure” and “relaxation” weren’t part of Neil Hartmann’s vocabulary. He was the original workaholic—he didn’t know how to re-fax. So just who did he think he was kidding?

  “Why?” he repeated with lazy amusement. “Do I need a reason to ask my own wife to lunch?”

  “Stop itl” Lacey said with quiet anger. “Just stop it, Neil, if you want to play games to amuse yourself while you’re in town, go find somebody else. I have neither the time nor the inclination to indulge your whims.”

  His smile disappeared. “I’m not playing games, Lacey,” he said softly. “And you are my wife.”

  Their eyes locked in a silent battle of wills. Lacey was determined not to lose her temper. If she showed any loss of control, however slight, he would take it as a sign of weakness, and she would be vulnerable to attack.

  “Only for the time being,” she granted quietly at last.

  She was stunned by his reaction. He leaned forward, his eyes suddenly hard and his lean body tau! with anger.

  “Till death us do part,” he said clearly and coldly. “That’s the second time in as many days you’ve made that nasty little threat. No divorce, Lacey. There won’t be any divorce,”

  For a moment she was too stunned and dismayed to reply. Then she leaned back in her own chair and ran her eyes over him contemptuously. Fight fire with fire, she told herself firmly.

  “Open your eyes, Neil. This is the 1980s. If I decide to divorce you, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. All I have to do is claim irreconcilable differences. It’s not even called divorce anymore. The courts refer to it as ‘dissolution of a marriage,’ and it’s almost as simple as renewing your driver’s license. I wouldn’t even have to show up. My attorney could handle the whole thing for me while I stayed here and ran my business.”

  “I’d fight it,” he spat at her. “If you tried to divorce me, I’d fight you all the way, Lacey.”

  “Please yourself,” she answered with forced calmness. “When one partner wants to end a marriage and the other doesn’t, the court usually agrees that they have irreconcilable differences.” She allowed a small smile to touch her lips. “As I said, Neil, there isn’t a damned thing you could do about it. And once a judge heard the sordid history of our marriage, I somehow doubt he’d press very hard for counseling.”

  She’d expected him to explode and was poised to spring for the door at the first move from him. She wasn’t prepared for his tight-lipped silence, or the way he sank back in his chair and raked an agitated hand through his thick hair. A look of bitter defeat clouded his eyes before he closed them with a sigh.

  “I knew you’d hate me, but I never imagined just how much,” he said dully. “So you’ve made up your mind.”

  An actual ph
ysical pain speared Lacey’s chest, and she was at a loss to understand its cause. It couldn’t be the thought of ending something that had to all intents and purposes been over for eight years, she told herself. It certainly couldn’t be the sight of Neil looking so…..ill, she thought again, and was once more surprised. But yes, he did look ill, and unutterably tired.

  “I haven’t made any decision about divorce,” she said, and the huskiness in her voice was yet another surprise. “To be honest, I hadn’t seriously considered it until yesterday. I just want you to realize it’s a possibility, Neil, and that if I decide it’s what I want, you won’t be able to bully or coerce me into changing my mind. Now—“she took a deep breath, then let it out slowly “—will you please stop fencing with me and tell me why you’ve come back here after all these years, and why you’re buying a rundown farm in the middle of nowhere? You must realize it will cost you at least as much as you’re paying for the property to fix it up?”

  His eyes slowly opened, and his mouth twisted in a wry smile. “More. I estimate I’ll have to sink another seventy thousand into that place before it’s fit to live in.”

  “But why!” Lacey exclaimed. “It isn’t like you to throw away your hard-earned capital on something that’ll never show a profit, and I can’t believe you’re buying on impulse. You drove out and saw the place—you know how isolated it is and the condition the buildings are in. The well’s contaminated, one of the storage sheds collapsed last winter, and it’s a wonder the others haven’t given in to gravity before now. You could drive a truck through some of the cracks in the barn walls, and the house, the house is….”

  “Are you trying to talk yourself out of a sale?” Neil suddenly smiled. He was once more lounging in the chair, the amusement back in his eyes as he lifted one shaggy brow at her.

  Lacey flushed, irritated with herself for her lack of professionalism. “I never misrepresent a piece of property. If a buyer feels he’s been deceived, he tends to be dissatisfied. And that’s bad for business,” she added sternly.

  “I assure you, Lacey, I’m perfectly satisfied with both the property and the selling price,” Neil drawled. “Why don’t you think of this purchase as an investment in my future? The older I get, the more I find myself looking back,” he reflected. “I’ve been tin inking I’d like to retire here,. .someday.”

  The last word was added after a split second’s hesitation.

  “RetireI” Lacey scoffed. “You’ll never retire, Neil. You’d be climbing the walls inside a week if you tried. All that peace and quiet would drive you crazy, and you know it.”

  “You never know what you can put up with until you try,” he murmured. Suddenly leaning forward, he captured her left hand as it rested on the desk. “You still wear your rings. I figured you’d have thrown them away years ago.”

  Lacey resisted the urge to withdraw her hand; there was no telling how he’d construe such a gesture. She wore the rings for the twins’ sake. It was bad enough that they had to grow up without a father around; she couldn’t add to their problems by refusing to even acknowledge that they had one. In addition to their own natural curiosity, there had been questions from friends and schoolmates over the years. She’d dealt with them by telling the boys that she and their father had separated before they were bom, and he lived too far away to visit. So far the explanation had been enough, but she knew the day was coming when they would demand to know more.

  “They’re much too valuable to throw away,” she replied when Neil showed no inclination to release her hand.

  His eyes lifted from the rings to her face, his expression guarded. “Valuable,” he repeated softly. “You’re talking about their monetary value, of course. I don’t expect you attach any sentimental value to them. Now I, on the other hand—” He paused as he held up his own left hand for her to see that he still wore the plain gold band she’d slipped on his finger more than ten years ago. “Romantic fool that I am, I feel a ridiculous attachment to this symbol of our eternal love.”

  Lacey nearly choked at his hypocrisy. “Love!” she replied scornfully. “You don’t know the meaning of the word, Neil. The closest you’ve ever come to experiencing love is the thrill you get closing a multimillion-dollar deal. You’re incapable of the real thing, just as you’re incapable of trust or faith. Don’t talk to me about lovel I gave you love once. When I think of how I worshipped you—adored you! Fool that I was, I’d have been willing to die for you! And what did I get in return for all that pathetically shameless love? Kindness? Consideration? Even pity for the childish way I worshipped at your feet? No, you returned my love with deliberate, sadistic cruelty. You killed it, Neil—butchered it, and then turned your back and walked away.”

  By the time she finished, she was shaking, and her cheeks were wet with tears of bitterness and remembered pain. Yet a small, isolated part of her was stunned and appalled by her own emotional outburst. She didn’t notice that Neil had gone white.

  “Lacey, don’t!” he said hoarsely, and then he was bending over her hand, pressing his forehead to it. His shoulders rose and fell with his harsh, uneven breathing as he fought for control. Lacey was still too distraught to fully comprehend the effect her diatribe had had on Neil until his ragged voice ended the thick silence in the room.

  “It took me about three hours to realize you hadn’t done what Jason accused you of,” he muttered. His eyes, darkened by emotion, now sought hers, and his lean fingers had her hand in a death grip.

  Lacey was nearly blinded by rage. She yanked furiously to free her hand, but he held it fast. “Just which accusation are you referring to?” she choked out. “His claim that I plotted with him to steal your damned formula or the one thai had me hopping in and out of his bed? Which charge did you generously acquit me of, Neil?”

  “Both!” His voice was as strangled as hers. “Both, Lacey! I—” He suddenly broke off, releasing her to get to his feet, turning away as if he didn’t want her to see his face.

  “When I left the apartment that night, I was still too hurt and angry to think straight,” he continued in a rough voice. Lacey nearly laughed. Hurt? she thought. Oh, that’s rich. Tell me another one, Neil. “I felt betrayed. That’s the only way I know how to explain it. I stopped at the first bar I came to and threw a fifty at the bartender. I told him when that was gone to let me know, and I’d give him another one.”

  “I guess I should feel flattered that you gave me more than you spent on booze,” Lacey remarked acidly. “Two hundreds and a fifty—that’s what you stuffed in my purse. As much as any high-priced whore you’d ever had was worth, you said. Only I didn’t earn it, did I, Neil?”

  “Please, stop!” Neil whirled to face her, and the anguished plea in his eyes turned the rest of her accusing words to dust in her mouth.

  “If you never believe another thing I say to you, Lacey, believe this,” he said with a fierce intensity. ‘When I left that bar I went straight back home. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life, because I knew I’d have to face you after—” His mouth contorted in self-loathing, and then he controlled it and went on.

  “By then I’d realized that Jason had tied to protect himself. I was ready to go down on my knees to you, to beg you to try and forgive me.” He hesitated, then added in a hollow voice, “But you’d already gone. I nearly went crazy. I was scared to death you might….” He didn’t finish, but Lacey knew what he was going to say.

  “I thought about it,” Lacey whispered, reliving that night when she’d wandered the streets in a daze after leaving their apartment—the apartment he’d ordered her out of before he left,

  “Lacey?”

  She looked up to find him standing before her, his hands in his pockets and his feet braced apart. He looked very intimidating, and Lacey shivered involuntarily. His mouth tightened when he saw it.

  “I want to know whether you believe me,”-he said quietly.

  Lacey sighed. “Does it matter, after all this time?”

 
He momentarily lost the control he’d regained. “Of course it matters!” he said harshly. Then he astounded her by dropping onto one knee and taking both her hands in his. “Lacey, don’t you see, it’s important that you believe me. If—”

  “I wanted to be believed eight years ago, Neil!” she interrupted. “I begged you to believe me, but you took the word of an admitted thief over that of your own wife. You wanted to think the worst of me!”

  “Not” He’d gone pate again, and his fingers tightened in a bone-crushing grip. “You mustn’t think that! i didn’t want to believe it, but Jason—”

  “The point is, you did believe it, Neil. You couldn’t have done what you did, otherwise, it might sound crazy, but that hurt even more than what you did to me. That you’d actually think me capable of the things Jason accused me of made me sick inside. I knew you didn’t love me, but I thought you at least respected me, trusted me,”

  “I toved you, Lacey.” His voice was low and tinged with resignation, “I may not have been able to show you the right way or tell you, but t always loved you. But I guess you don’t believe that, either.”

  After a moment he released her hands and rose to his feet with a lithe, easy grace. His voice was soft, but there was a steely determination in his eyes.

  “I’ve got a lot to atone for, I know. Maybe I can never make it all up to you, Lacey, but I want to try. All I ask is that you give me a second chance.”

  She stared up at him in disbelief, “Neil. Her voice began as raspy and weak, but grew stronger as the shock wore off. “You can’t be asking me for a reconciliation? Even you don’t have that much gallt”

  His smile was cynical and without humor. “You know better than that, Lacey,” he drawled.

  Hot color flooded her face. “You think you can just walk back into my life, say, I’m sorry, Lacey, and expect me to welcome you with open arms? Forget it, Neil!” she snapped, “I’m not buying!”

  His sigh sounded more impatient than anything else. “This isn’t working out at al! like I planned it.” He grimaced. “I was going to take you to lunch—”