“Taking off one year doesn’t mean I won’t go.” Sawyer’s voice was more or less calm. Getting angry with Squire never did accomplish anything.
“No.”
On the other hand, anger wasn’t so easily controlled. Not by a boy who was nearly a man. “It’s not like I’m gonna knock up some girl and get married and end up punching cows for somebody else for the rest of my life, ” he snapped. Then regretted it when his father’s eyes frosted over.
Squire pointed his finger at Sawyer. “If that’s some reference to your mama, you’d best start spitting apologies.”
But it was too late now. “Come on, Squire, everybody in town knows I was born a few weeks too early to be considered a honeymoon baby. You were married in February. I was born in August. Preemies—isn’t that what they’re called—are usually smaller than eleven pounds—” The words dried up momentarily in his throat when his father hauled him off his feet, two white-knuckled hands wrapped in the front of his shirt. He swallowed a knot of shame and anger and frustration and—dammit—love, for the iron-haired man who was his dad, but didn’t even use the title. “Just ’cause you never talk about it—or her—doesn’t mean other people don’t.”
“I loved your mama from the day I met her, ” Squire said softly. “And I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone, even her own flesh, speak badly of her.”
Squire released Sawyer’s shirt so abruptly that he stumbled backward, nearly falling down and the humiliation of it was more than Sawyer could stand. “You don’t want anyone to speak of her, period, ” Sawyer said roughly. “She died and you acted like she never existed—” Considering the bitterness of the words that spewed from him without control or any hint of stopping, he ought to feel some satisfaction at the way the old man flinched at that “—like you...you blamed her—or something—for having had the gall to die on you.” Tears burned hotly in his eyes and he hated the weakness, because if there was one thing Squire Clay had instilled in his sons it was to never be weak, and he hated the old man for making him feel as if there were something wrong with him just because he didn’t want to devote his life to this godforsaken ranch, and he hated himself for putting that look in his dad’s eyes. The look that had been there the day Squire watched his wife being buried—too young, too soon. A look that in the years since had gradually begun to fade. Or maybe it never had faded; it was just that Sawyer had gotten so used to seeing it there.
He gritted his teeth and glared at his father. He’d only wanted to get his father to understand why he wasn’t ready to step foot on a university campus come fall—not get into all this... this stuff. He opened his mouth, an apology on his lips, but his father spoke first.
“Get out of my sight. ”
The halting apology died unsaid. He turned on his heel and crossed the gravel road to the big house, slamming in through the back-screen door. He went straight inside, up the stairs and yanked down the ladder to the attic. Up there, he blinked at the dust motes and the dim light. He had a backpack somewhere—
His gaze fell on a wooden trunk, years of dust obscuring the details of careful carving. The trunk that, until his mother’s death, had resided at the foot of his parents’ bed, but which, since her burial, had been banished to the attic. He stared at the trunk, angrily swiping at the tears that burned his eyes. The trunk had an old dusty padlock that still held it closed—a padlock that had never been there when she’d been alive.
He reached out, his hand closing over the stock of a rifle that had been long ago dismantled. He deliberately approached the trunk and the lock that just then seemed to be symbolic of his whole life—locked up; locked in.
With one mighty crack, he brought the stock down on the lock and it sprang apart, falling to the floor with a clatter. Sawyer flipped the latch and yanked up the lid. The hinges screeched in protest.
He tossed the stock aside and crouched down beside the trunk, wiping his dusty hands on his jeans before reaching for the neatly folded items inside. A baby blanket. A dried, crinkly-crisp bouquet of flowers, tied together with a faded blue ribbon. A shoe box filled with black-and-white photographs of people he didn’t recognize.
A bunch of lacy handkerchiefs with S.B. sewed on one corner. And a packet of envelopes tied neatly together with a red ribbon that still had a tidy bow in it. Sawyer sat back, holding the letters in his hand. He didn’t even glance again at the rest of the items as he slid out the top envelope. He didn’t know why he was suddenly so curious about the contents of a letter his mother had carefully preserved.
A need to connect with the woman who had left behind her family of men so long ago? A need to get back at his autocratic father, by delving into Sarah’s belongings that Squire had so deliberately put away but never completely disposed of?
Whatever the reason. Sawyer slid the letter out of the envelope and opened it, catching the small photograph that fell out with one hand. At first, Sawyer thought the letter had been written by Squire, because the slashing letters were similar to his father’s style. But as he read, he realized it was not written by Squire Clay. It was written by another man.
A man who addressed Sarah Benedict as “My darling Sarah.” Who signed the letter with, “Loving you always, S. ” Not S for Squire. But S for—he automatically glanced at the photo in his hand. Then looked more closely. He. turned it over, looking at the back. and felt his whole world shrink down to a pinpoint.
S for Sawyer Templeton.
He turned the photo of the other Sawyer over and looked at it once more. He could have been looking at a picture of himself.
He sat there for a long time, looking at the photograph.
Then he replaced everything exactly the way he’d found it inside the trunk. There was nothing he could do about the broken lock But nobody ever came up to the attic anymore except him.
He found his backpack sitting on top of a box of old phonograph records. He took it down and shook off then dust and went back to his bedroom where he threw in enough clothes to keep him going for a week or so. He didn’t have a lot of cash, but if he could get to Gillette and the bus depot, he’d make do.
With his backpack hanging from his shoulder, he took one look around his bedroom. Daniel’s checkers game was sitting on the floor and, muttering an oath at himself for doing so, he found a sheet of notebook paper and scrawled a note, leaving it setting on the middle of his mattress.
Then he walked down the stairs and out the front door, which nobody ever used, and walked until he reached the state highway. Then he walked some more and eventually a trucker stopped and he rode the rest of the—
“Yo, earth to Sawyer.”
He jerked to the present, knocking his hand against his empty coffee saucer.
The ease he’d felt sitting there with his brothers was gone, but he didn’t so much as betray it with a blink. And that loss of ease had everything to do with Squire, who was watching him steadily, as if divining his every thought.
He set the saucer aside and uncoiled from the chair. “It’s late. Rebecca’s probably exhausted.”
“She left more’n an hour ago.” That came from Matthew, who was sprawled in the chair to Sawyer’s right.
After everything, she’d left without a word. He couldn’t believe how hard that hit him. Without waiting a beat, Jefferson handed Sawyer a set of keys. “Take Em’s pickup,” he said.
Sawyer palmed the keys, nodded to the others and strode toward the door. He stopped short, though, long enough to turn around and bid goodbye to his sisters-in-law. “You did good, Em.” He kissed the top of her head when he went back to the master bedroom to find the women and their daughters cooing over the newest family member.
Despite the fact that she’d brought a baby into the world within the past few hours—beside the fact that she was obviously exhausted, her chocolate-brown eyes were radiant. She smiled serenely and caught his hand. “Now that you’ve come back to us, I hope you decide to stick around a while.”
He shrugged, noncommittally
. There were several things to resolve before he decided what he was going to do. He peered into the sleeping baby’s face. “For such a tiny guy, you sure do cause a huge fuss,” he murmured.
Emily raised a mock fist. “I’ll give you tiny—”
He lifted his hands apologetically and escaped the feminine laughter that rained over his head. What did he know about babies?
He knew the navy. He knew the SEALs, was still heavily involved with the black ops team which he’d led and bled for. He knew his particular branch of intel, the men and women under his command, the increasing frustration he’d been dealing with over a bureaucracy more interested in being politically correct than just doing what was right. But babies?
What he knew about babies would fill a thimble, he thought as he drove Emily’s fire-engine-red pickup back into Weaver. What he knew about Rebecca More-house, apparently filled even less.
How could she just leave like that? Without a word of goodbye. Without a thought.
By the time he’d made it back to town, his temper—rather than cooling during the drive—had simmered until it bubbled in his veins thick and hot. He parked on the snowy concrete slab next to her garage and without thought went right through her unlocked kitchen door, back to her bedroom, where she was a still form in the bed that they’d torn to pieces less than six hours ago.
He flipped on the overhead light, crossing to the bed and planting his hands on either side of her when she rolled over, gasping and blinking at the sudden light. “How could you walk away like that?”
Her face, bare of cosmetics, was unutterably vulnerable and his extreme grip of anger eased.
Her lashes shielded her golden brown eyes from the unrelenting light. And from him. “I thought you’d want to stay there,” she said at last. “You remembered—”
He pushed away from the bed with a derisive sound. “Rebecca, if I came even close to believing that—” He broke off, scrubbing his hands over his face, then shoving his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching out for her again. Where was his control? He was supposed to be a man of control. Isn’t that what his men called him? “Concrete Clay”—unyielding, unswerving, unrelenting in his pursuit of justice in a world too filled with injustice.
He’d spent years cultivating that control, starting with the moment he’d hitched a ride out of Wyoming to make his own life, his own future, ironically becoming the type of man Squire had raised him to be. He’d had less than a handful of occasions when he’d lost his control.
An innocent medical student named Becky Lee, whom he’d known better than to get involved with, considering the dangerous life he’d chosen, had been one.
Testifying in the court-martial of a man he’d served with, trusted once, and finally had to take down, another.
And now, back with sweet Becky Lee, all grown-up, with a very definite mind of her own, he didn’t seem able to find his control on so many levels, it scared the Beelzebub out of him.
He’d done a lot in his life; had fought fights that didn’t usually end with a pretty bow wrapped around them. He’d snooped and spied and delved and probed into people’s lives, their business activities, their personal relationships. On occasion, he’d even taken lives—with deliberate, deadly accuracy.
But Rebecca Morehouse saved them.
“This is one of those times I’m sure God is up there having a grand old laugh,” he muttered.
She pushed herself up on her pillows, holding the comforter to her neck like a shield. He noticed that her hand was shaking when she pushed her lustrous hair out of her eyes. “Sawyer, what are you doing here?”
“I want to finish what we started.”
Her slender, elegant throat worked as she swallowed. “Not tonight dear, I’ve got a headache.” Expressed in her husky, not-quite-steady voice, the joke fell flat.
“I’m not talking about making love with you.” His lips twisted, his eyes running over her. “Though, God knows, I intend to do that, too.”
Rosy color flooded her creamy cheeks and he became distracted for a moment by the way she pressed her soft lips together, as if she was holding back words—or remembering the sensation of a kiss. “I might have something to say about that.”
“Yes, you will,” he agreed. “Something along the lines, perhaps, of ‘I don’t care what you do, Sawyer, I only care about now. About us.’”
He watched the blood drain from her face, and had to force himself to continue. Because if he didn’t, if they didn’t move beyond what he’d done in the past, then any hope of a future with her was already dead. And a future with her was exactly what he wanted. Somehow. Some way.
He’d known it the moment he’d watched her holding Jefferson’s newborn son—not holding the baby as the physician who’d just delivered him into the world, but as a woman; a mother.
But before a future, they had to deal with the past. So he pushed out the words even as the memories coalesced. “That’s what you said, and I knew you were too young to really know what you were talking about. But I wanted you more than any single thing I’d ever wanted in my life. So I overlooked the fact that I was ten years older than you. And I overlooked the fact that there was no room back then for a future together. And I overlooked the fact that you were a total innocent when it came to men. I took that innocence. I took you. For those—what, four months?—you were mine, and I was yours.”
“You were the navy’s,” she corrected flatly. “I was...‘shore leave.’ Don’t pretend it was more than that for you.”
“I went back to look for you.”
Her eyes widened for a moment, then her lips twisted. “So the sex was good.”
“Dammit, Rebecca, don’t do that. Don’t reduce what we shared to something—hell, to something base. It wasn’t like that.”
Rebecca couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “It wasn’t?” She certainly hadn’t thought so. But he’d cleared her up on that point. “Obviously you don’t remember quite as much as you think you do.”
“I remember that you split San Diego during the time I was in Malaysia. You disappeared. You left school. Why did you do that, Rebecca? Is that when you took up with Tom? He was that visiting lecturer who had the hots for you, wasn’t he? He was probably old enough to be your father.”
She wouldn’t cry. She would not. There’d been a time ten years ago when she hadn’t been able to get through a day without resorting to tears. But that time was over and gone. And right now she was unutterably weary from the events of the day. “I owe you no explanations,” she said evenly. “You walked away from me, Captain. You made it clear.” Oh, God, he’d made it painfully clear. “So please don’t try to romanticize it now, so long after the fact. We had a...good time.” Her voice cracked. “And that’s all we had.”
“Dammit, Bec—”
“No.” She couldn’t handle this. She threw back the comforter and slid from the bed, yanking the hem of her flannel nightshirt down around her thighs as she hurriedly crossed to her dresser and her grandmother’s antique jewelry box sitting on top. She opened it and pushed her fingertips past her wide silver wedding band and a swirl of pearls, then pulled out a microcassette.
Her breathing was harsh as she turned and slammed it against his chest. “A good time,” she repeated. “You said—God, it wasn’t even twenty-four hours ago—that you said you wouldn’t hurt me again. Well, you won’t hurt me again because I won’t let you,” she vowed. “But do me the c-courtesy of calling it what it was.” She turned away, angrily brushing at the tears that were burning down her cheeks. “A...good... time.”
Sawyer’s hand closed over the tiny audiocassette. “I couldn’t offer you a future, Bec. I warned you going in of that. I’m not blaming you. I was older. Had more experience ten years ago than you do, even now. You were the eternal optimist and I knew it. I should have known you’d believe you could change that—change me. Who I was. What I did.”
Her jaw ached. She wanted to hit him upside the head and the violence of
the urge shocked her. “Your back must ache constantly under the weight of that ego you cart around.”
An indefinable shadow haunted his dark blue gaze. “Rebecca, I’ll admit that the memories are still a little patchy. But I do remember the calls you made to me.”
“The calls you couldn’t be bothered to answer.”
“If you weren’t trying to hold on to what we had, then why did you keep trying to reach me, even though I was half a world away from San Diego? If you didn’t believe that what we’d had could continue, why did you keep leaving messages with my C.O.? With every person who could conceivably reach me? You managed to find out where I was based, and that was classified information. That took twenty-three calls, Doc. Twenty-three.”
The hot words on her lips nearly escaped in her shock that he’d known, and remembered, such a detail. But how could she tell him why she’d kept calling? Why she’d swallowed her humiliation over and over again to get in touch with him?
“You’re mistaken,” she lied right through her teeth, and felt her face heat because of it. “Confusing me with one of your other... shore-leave girls.”
An expression remarkably close to pain darkened his carved features. Over the past ten years, she’d done a fair job of convincing herself that Capt. Sawyer Clay didn’t feel emotional pain. She knew she’d been somewhat mistaken, because he had been suffering through his amnesia. But had he been feeling pain, true pain, because of her?
A Child for Christmas Page 16
