Donovan's Child

by Christine Rimmer

  He saw her as a woman.

  Desirable to him.

  More than desirable.

  Wanted. Yearned for. Craved.

  The reality of the situation became all at once blindingly clear. He had been lying—to her, and more than to her, to himself. He’d treated her callously, cruelly.

  Because she stirred him. She…excited him. From their initial meeting, in the studio, when Ben brought her to him on that first day, he had felt it—the brisk wind of change on the air.

  Felt a sense of possibility, of promise. As if she had marched into a darkened, stuffy room on those long, strong legs of hers, run up the shut blinds, and thrown the windows wide.

  He’d been blinking and whining and sniping against the light ever since. Like some cranky old man.

  Yes. Like an old man. An old man awakened abruptly from a long, fitful sleep. He’d been digging at her, taunting her, trying to get her to give up and go, to leave him in peace—but at the same time he couldn’t help but be drawn to her.

  She was not only a joy to look at, she had an incisive intelligence. She questioned everything, wanted to see beneath the surface, to understand the deeper truth. And beyond looks and brains, she possessed a kind and generous heart.

  She was pretty much perfect. His ideal woman.

  And he had met her too late.

  All this came to him in an instant—the instant before she turned beneath the spray and opened her eyes.

  She let out a shriek, blinked fiercely against the water that still ran into her eyes, blinding her—and looked again. “Donovan? What in the…?” She turned, twisted the knob to cut off the water, at the same time as she groped for the towel on the rack outside the shower stall.

  He spun the chair to face the door, giving her the chance to cover herself, at least. And then he just sat there, the rolled drawings he’d had to show her waiting in his lap, feeling not only reprehensible, but shamed beyond bearing.

  Was she wrapped in a towel yet? She was absolutely silent behind him. All he heard were the final hollow drip-drip-drips of water on slate from the shut-off shower heads.

  And he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. Sorry was not going to cut it. And as for trying to justify what he’d just done? There was no justification. None.

  She spoke then, her voice low and tight. “Would you just leave, please?”

  It was the permission he’d been waiting for. She had released him. He didn’t look back at her. He kept his gaze straight ahead as he wheeled out of the bathroom, across the dim bedroom, down the empty sitting room and out through the open hallway door.

  Abilene’s first thought, once she heard him shut the outer door behind him, was that she needed to go. She needed to get her stuff packed, throw it in her car and get out, go home, back to San Antonio where she belonged.

  Really, she couldn’t stay here anymore. She just couldn’t.

  She traded the hastily grabbed towel for the robe that hung on the back of the bathroom door. Her hair hung in snaky coils, still dripping wet, and she left a trail of droplets across the bedroom floor as she pulled back the door to the walk-in closet, went in there and grabbed an empty suitcase, the largest one of the three she had brought with her.

  She hauled it back into the bedroom, tossed it on the bed, got hold of the zipper tab and ripped it along the track until she had it undone. Then she flipped the top back, spreading it wide.

  After that, she just stood there, staring into the empty space within, still dripping on the bedside rug, feeling overwhelmed and awful and foolish.

  And also numb, somehow.

  She shook herself. Then she turned on her bare heel and marched back into the closet, where she grabbed a bunch of stuff, hangers and all, and lugged it back to the open suitcase. When she got there, she flung the whole pile into the yawning interior.

  Bracing her hands on her hips, she stared down at the tangle of shirts and light jackets, knit tops and cardigan sweaters.

  “What a mess,” she whispered, to no one in particular. “What a stupid, crazy mess.”

  She turned, sank to the edge of the bed and gazed blindly toward the open door to the closet and thought how, if she was going to go, she shouldn’t be just sitting here, staring off into space. She needed to finish packing, to put on some clothes, to dry her hair.

  But she didn’t get up. She continued to sit there. By then, she was thinking that she didn’t really want to go.

  She wanted to finish the design for the children’s center. She wanted her chance to see it built.

  And still, the yearning remained within her, to understand what was going on with Donovan, to…talk to him, or not to talk. Just to be with him the way they had been at dinner the night before. To enjoy spending time with him. Without having to be constantly on guard against his sudden, inexplicable cruelty.

  She wanted to be able to laugh with him, to speak openly. Honestly. Without fear of emotional ambush or petty retaliation.

  With a heavy sigh, she got up, scooped the tangle of clothing and hangers into her arms, carried them back to the closet, and hung them up again. She returned to the bedroom, shut the suitcase, zipped it tight and put it away.

  She was just emerging from the closet when she heard the polite tap on the sitting room door.

  What now?

  “It’s open,” she called, and then went over and sat on the long, rustic bench at the end of the bed.

  She heard the outer door open. A moment later, Donovan appeared in the bedroom doorway.

  He stopped the chair there, hands tight on the wheels, and waited, his fine mouth a grim line, his eyes bleak.

  She was still naked under the robe and her hair hung on her shoulders in wet clumps. But so what? He’d already seen everything anyway.

  Carefully, she smoothed the robe on her bare knees. Then she drew her shoulders back and aimed her chin high. “You have something you want to say?”

  He nodded. And then, finally, with obvious difficulty, he said, “An apology seems ridiculous. It’s not as though I have any excuse for my behavior.”

  She said nothing. If he had some kind of explanation to make, well, let him go for it.

  He didn’t waver, didn’t look away. “Ridiculous,” he repeated. “But nonetheless necessary.” His eyes were dark right then, haunted. Gunmetal gray. He drew in a slow breath. “And so I do, I apologize. For what that’s worth, which I know is not a lot.”

  She fiddled with the tie of the robe, nervously. And realized the action betrayed her. So she let it go and wrapped her arms tightly around her middle. “These rooms are the one thing I have here, for myself, in this house. The one place I don’t have to be on guard, ever. The one place you are not allowed to be.”

  “You’re right. I know.” He let out another careful, pained breath and lowered his golden head. In shame, she hoped.

  Because he should be ashamed.

  She accused, “And now you’ve not only invaded my space, you’ve wheeled on into my bathroom and watched me in the shower.” She waited until he lifted his head and met her eyes. And then she gave him a look meant to sear him where he sat. “I turned around and you were…just sitting there, watching me. Why?”

  “There’s no excuse,” he muttered low.

  “No argument there. I’ll ask you again. Why?”

  It took him a long count of five to answer. “Because you’re beautiful—or at least, at first, that was why.”

  She scoffed, “What? I should be flattered now?”

  “No. Of course not. I’m just trying to explain myself. Not that anything I say is going to make it okay. But you should know that at first, it was a totally objective appreciation.”

  “Objective?” She let out a harsh laugh. “As in detached?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And is that supposed to ease my mind somehow? That you broke into my rooms, rolled into my bathroom and looked at me—stared at me without my clothes on—and you felt nothing?”

  “I
didn’t say I felt nothing—I said I saw you…I don’t know, without heat, I guess.”

  What was he telling her? She had no idea. She should leave it alone, send him away.

  But she didn’t. “You looked at me coolly? Dispassionately. Is that it?”

  “No. There was passion. But it wasn’t personal. It was more the way I would admire good art.”

  “Good art.” She shook her head. “I have to tell you, Donovan. This is one strange conversation.”

  He wheeled a fraction closer—caught himself, and wheeled back to where he’d been before. “There’s more. You should know the rest of it. There should be honesty between us, at least.”

  Honesty. Well, okay. She agreed with him about the honesty. She wanted honesty.

  She wanted that a lot.

  “What else then?” She looked at him sideways, needing the truth, yes. But contrarily, not really sure she wanted to know whatever he might reveal next.

  He revealed it anyway. “I watched you swimming, too.”

  Her cheeks were suddenly burning. She pressed her palms to them. “Oh, great. And I need to know that, why?”

  “Because it’s the truth. It’s what I did. And I don’t want to lie to you, by omission or otherwise, about what I did. I owe you that much, at least.”

  She had no idea how to answer that. So she simply sat there, waiting, for whatever he would say next.

  He went on, “And it was the same, when I watched you swimming, as it was at first a little while ago, in there.” He gestured toward the bathroom. “There was appreciation. Admiration. A vague, faraway sense of longing, I guess you could say.”

  She sat forward, curious in spite of herself. “Longing for…?”

  “I don’t know. For the man I was once. For the past. For the present and the future, too. But not as they are and will be. As they might have been.”

  She thought of his child then, of the little boy. His lost son, Elias. She longed to ask him about Elias.

  But no. Bringing up Elias now would only send them spinning off in another direction entirely. They needed, right now, to stay with the subject at hand.

  The painful, awkward, weird—and thoroughly embarrassing—subject at hand.

  She raked her fingers back through her soggy hair. “So. You felt appreciation. Objective appreciation.”

  “Yes. When I watched you swimming. And today, too. At first. But then it changed.”

  Her throat clutched. She gulped hard, to make it relax. “Changed?”

  “That’s right. It became…something more. I found I was attracted. To you. As a man is attracted to a woman. It stopped being objective. I realized I want you. And I haven’t wanted anything or anyone since before the accident on the mountain—a long time before.”

  I want you. Had he actually just said that out loud?

  Okay, she truly was not ready to be having this conversation. Maybe she would never be ready. To speak of desire, of attraction, of sex with Donovan McRae.

  That wasn’t why she’d come here, worked her butt off, put up with his antagonism and his ruthless remarks. She was here for the work, and only the work. She had absolutely no interest in…

  She caught herself up short.

  Who was she kidding?

  She did have an interest in Donovan, as a man. She had a serious interest.

  He had captivated her from the beginning. From the first time she saw him, as a dewy-eyed undergraduate, one in hundreds in the audience on that long-ago evening when he came to speak at Rice.

  And since she’d been here, in his house, it was pretty much a toss-up over which fascinated her more: the work she’d come out here to do, or the man in the wheelchair across the bedroom from her.

  In the end, it was pretty simple. Much simpler than either of them were allowing it to be. She wanted him. And he wanted her.

  They should start with that. See where it led them…

  But really, how to start? That was not simple. Not with a man like Donovan.

  She rose and walked past him, crossing to the French doors. She opened the blinds. The winter sunlight spilled in, filling the room, gray and cool. Outside, the wind found its way into the courtyard, ruffled just slightly the glassy surface of the pool.

  He said her name, “Abilene.”

  She turned to look at him again.

  His gaze didn’t waver. He sat absolutely still at the threshold of her bedroom, waiting.

  She asked, “But why?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Why did you come in here in the first place? I mean, it’s one thing to look out a window and see me in the pool. It’s another to wheel right into my bathroom when you can hear the shower running and have to be reasonably certain you’ll find me stark naked in there.”

  He lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. In the morning light, she could see he hadn’t shaved yet. Golden stubble shone on his lean cheeks and sculpted jaw. He said, “I told you, there’s no excuse.”

  “You’re right. There isn’t.” But there had to be something. “But I think there is a reason, isn’t there?”

  He blew out a breath. “Fine. Yeah. There’s a reason.” He didn’t say what—really, the man was beyond exasperating.

  She was forced to prompt him again. “Okay. What reason?”

  And he finally gave it up. “I figured out the answer to our main problem. You must know how it is, when the solution finally comes.” He held out both hands to the side, palms up. “Magic time. I woke up this morning and I knew what we had to do….”

  “Wait a minute…” She felt suddenly breathless. Buoyant. “You mean you figured out what we need for the entry and the facade?”

  He nodded.

  “Oh, Donovan. That’s huge.”

  He lowered his head and spoke with real modesty. “It seemed that way at the time.”

  “I can’t believe it. This is fabulous. So you, what? You dreamed it?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly. I just woke up and I knew. I went to the studio. I couldn’t get it down fast enough. And when I had it, I came looking for you. I couldn’t wait to show you. It seemed important at the time.”

  “Donovan. It is important. It’s everything—I mean, if you’ve really got it….”

  “Oh, I’ve got it.” A slow smile burst across his wonderful face. He looked so charming, when he smiled.

  She remembered then. When she had turned in the shower and opened her eyes, saw him sitting there, big as life in her bathroom: there had been rolled drawings in his lap. “You had them with you before, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But where are they now?”

  “I went back to the studio. I left them in there.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that up front? I mean, it would have made what you did a little easier to understand.”

  “I told you. That would have been an excuse. And there is no excuse.” He glanced away, then back at her again. “Do you…want to see them?”

  “Are you kidding? I can’t wait to see them.”

  “You’re not leaving, then?” He looked so hopeful, his face open and eager.

  And she saw, at that moment, the man he had been, the man she had glimpsed from a distance once so long ago, before he lost a child. Before he fell down a mountain. Before all the things that can kill a man inside, make him hard and cold, cruel at heart.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not leaving.”

  Already, he was backing, clearing the doorway so he could turn. “Then get dressed. Meet me in the studio….”

  “Donovan.” She said his name softly. But it was, unmistakably, a command.

  He froze, his strong body drawn taut, rigid in the chair.

  She said, slowly and deliberately, “Stay. Please. Stay here with me. Just for a little while, all right?”

  He stared, perhaps sensing the direction of her thoughts, yet not really believing. And then he whispered, “But I don’t…” For once, he didn’t have the words.
r />   She asked, gently now, “Would you come out of the doorway, please? Would you…come here?”

  He started to come to her—then stopped the chair with a firm grip on the wheels. “Abilene…”

  “Hmm?”

  “You really don’t want to go there.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want. You’ll get it wrong every time.”

  His dark gold lashes swept down, then instantly lifted again to reveal watchful, stricken eyes. “I only mean, it’s not a good idea. We’ve cleared the air between us. You’ve decided to stay, to finish what we started. Now we can forget about all this.”

  “Forget?” It hurt, a lot, that he had decided to make what had passed between them just now sound so unimportant, so trivial. “Would it be that easy for you, to pretend this morning never happened?”

  “You know what I mean. We can go forward, do the work that has to be done, leave the rest of it alone.”

  “The rest of it?”

  He glanced beyond her, toward the open bathroom door. The light was still on in there. She followed his gaze briefly, long enough to see what he saw—the gleaming trail of water across the floor. Her towel in a damp clump, right where she had dropped it when she grabbed for her robe.

  “It would only lead to trouble,” he said gruffly, at last, still looking past her. “I’m no good for that, not any more.”

  She made herself ask, “No good for what?”

  He shut his eyes again. And that time, when he opened them, he met her gaze with defiance. And such stark, determined loneliness. “No good for any of it. Sex. Love. A future with someone—with you.”

  She tried for a teasing note. “Love and the future, huh? Well, Donovan, we really don’t have to tackle everything at once.”

  He laughed, as she’d hoped he might. But it was a gruff laugh, a sound with more pain than humor in it.

  “And as for sex…” She was looking down again, at her own bare feet on the hardwood floor. She drew her head up to find him watching her, his focus absolute. Unwavering. Waiting for her to finish what she’d so boldly begun. She blurted out, “Well, does it work? I mean, can you…? Is there some kind of damage, or is it all in your mind?”