by Sylvie Kurtz
When she arched against him, hunger turned into pure greed. More. He needed more. "Look at me."
Her eyes opened. He watched her face soften with every one of his thrusts, felt the tension coil strand by strand in her body, reveled in the demanding curl of her fingers into the muscles of his shoulders. He took her faster, higher until her eyes glazed, until her mouth opened for a long, shuddering moan, until her body quaked with pleasure, then melted into a boneless mass of satisfaction.
Holding on to her, he surrendered to the mad fever coursing through his body and spilled himself into her with a guttural growl. He couldn't let her go, so he eased himself sideways and held her tighter, burying his face in her hair while breath found his lungs once more.
The feel of her, palm against the hard beat of his heart, head nestled into his shoulder, body molded against his, was thick with comfort. It was heaven, it was... home.
A strange sadness wove into the threads of his satisfaction and had him swallowing thickly. He pressed a kiss against the sweet scent of her hair. Her sigh of contentment reverberated against his heart.
"No regrets?" he asked, skimming his hands tentatively over the skin of her curvy side.
"Life's too short for regrets." She snuggled closer. "Logan... talk to me."
Her soft whisper trooped an army of goose bumps all over his body. Cold replaced the wild heat of mating, shattering the comfort of escape.
He started to leave, but she hung on to him. "Talk to me. Tell me about Samantha. I want to know that part of you."
She was asking for an intimacy he couldn't give, an intimacy that would drive her away.
"I can't love you, Beth."
"I'm not asking for love." Her hand caressed his jaw. Her lips gently grazed his chest. Her head tilted up, and she looked at him with those starry eyes so bright and sure. "Do you believe in the value of human worth?"
"Of course."
"Then every life matters—even yours."
He started to deny her claim, but she put a finger against his lips. "No one wanted me to talk about Jim. It was too painful for them. But I needed to talk, and I'm glad Eve was there to listen. Let me be there for you, Logan. Talk to me."
Falling back against the pillow, he closed his eyes, saw the parade of the memories he'd tried to outrun returning one by one.
In the darkness, with Beth, warm in his arms, a willing listener, would it be so bad to give voice to his ghost?
Chapter 13
"It was Christmas," Logan said. His cold body felt nothing, not the sheets beneath him, not the woman in his arms, not the pain so intent on slicing him open. The memories charged at him, bloody warriors leading a coup. He saw them all clearly on the screen of his mind, watched them from a psychic distance. To do anything else would invite disaster.
"Sam died when a drunk kid changing a CD in his truck drove over the curb and plowed into her. She was learning to ride the new two-wheeler she'd gotten for Christmas."
He'd run behind her all afternoon, impressed by her determination to show off for her friends the next day.
"One more time, Daddy! Just one more."
"One more and that's it. Daddy's getting tired."
He'd run beside her, holding the vinyl seat with nothing more than the tips of his fingers while she found her balance.
Then he'd let her go.
Hands braced on knees, catching his breath, he'd watched her triumph. Long, brown hair flying from under her purple helmet, she'd been so happy. Her grin with its missing front teeth, her laughter were forever imprinted in his mind.
"Look at me, Daddy. I'm doing it! I'm doing it!"
He'd watched her, pride swelling his chest, and he'd missed the pickup truck cresting the hill farther up the street. Pride had quickly turned to horror. By the time the truck had jumped the curb, he'd flown helplessly toward her. "Samantha!"
But he got there too late. All he'd been able to do was hold her broken and bleeding body while he waited for the ambulance.
"My wife blamed me. She hadn't wanted Sam, had never given her much care, but she blamed me." Their marriage, already brittle, had fallen apart. They'd divorced. She'd gone back to her parents.
"I kept working, trusting in the system to make things right for Sam." But the system had betrayed him. "The kid, a judge's son, got away with a slap on the wrist."
He'd lost faith in law and justice. He couldn't work with kids anymore on the special school projects he'd kept doing while waiting for the trial. The noise, the people, the memories drove him crazy. He couldn't stand to see children play, to hear them laugh. He wasn't making a difference, anyway. Half of the kids he tried to save from gangs ended up killed or mutilated. So he handed in his resignation and left.
"If I hadn't let her go, Sam would still be here." He couldn't forgive himself any more than his ex-wife had.
"One day you'll begin to live again," Beth said. Her hand was warm against his heart as if she were holding it in place for him.
"No." He was glad she hadn't tried to talk him out of his blame.
"There's no other choice." She hugged him tighter, and her soft strength was a comfort. "Samantha's death is a tragedy, but if you let everything around you die, you're just compounding the disaster."
How could he ever be happy again when Sam would never know happiness? How could he ever be happy knowing he'd prayed for her death as she lay like a broken doll on her hospital bed?
He was glad for the cover of night, for the fact Beth couldn't see his face, that he couldn't see hers. His throat felt tight, his lips parched. It hurt to speak. "I was relieved when she died."
A shiver ran through Beth. Disgust? He tried to move away, but she clung to him, as if she needed someone to hang on to as much as he did.
"How long did Samantha live after the accident?" Beth asked.
"Nearly a month."
"Jim, too." Her hand slipped from his chest. He stopped the slide and held her hand in place with his own. "A month of racking pain while the cancer ate him alive. I felt awful because I was relieved when he died."
"No more suffering." She wasn't disgusted by his admission. She'd felt it, too, the tearing apart of seeing a loved one die, wanting the suffering to end, needing them to live. She understood.
"Yes." Her tears plopped onto his chest. He wiped her cheek with a thumb, kissed the top of her head. "Then I felt guilty."
"Ashamed." He could still feel it now, the heavy weight of shame. The admission wasn't so hard, knowing it was shared.
"Angry." Her hand fisted against his ribs, her body echoed the remembered anger. "How could he leave me like that?"
"I was her father. She was in my care. I should have saved her." He'd been responsible for Sam's welfare, and he'd failed her.
"I should have seen. I should have sensed. I should have known."
No, he wanted to say, you couldn't have. But he knew words couldn't take away the burden. It was there, an invisible appendage forever a part of them. "I would have given anything to take her place."
"If I forget him, how will Jamie ever know his father?"
He ached for her, for her loss, for her fear, yet felt an uncommon peace envelop him. He wasn't alone. She understood.
Like shipwrecked survivors at sea, they turned to each other, seeking comfort and courage. And when the storm ebbed, a tiny ray of hope flickered in his heart.
For the first time in years he slept without nightmares.
* * *
"The ice is ready," Jamie announced when Logan opened the front door a week later. It was a glorious winter day with clear skies and no wind. The kind of day that would give a boy red cheeks but allow him to play outside for hours. "Wanna come skating?"
The picture of his grandfather holding his hand as he balanced on skates for the first time flashed through his mind. Dallas had had unbounded patience with an awkward boy, and Logan had returned the favor with wholehearted devotion.
"I've got too much work to do." Sharing stolen momen
ts with Beth was one thing—they both knew it was temporary—but being with Jamie was still hard. The boy didn't understand the rules grown-ups lived by. And even though Jamie tugged at his heart, there was no sense wishing for things that could never happen.
He could not be for Jamie what Dallas had been for him—not even until spring. It would hurt too much when he had to leave. He had to keep their interactions to a minimum, but Jamie had a way of asking questions that required tough answers, of demanding attention in a thousand small ways.
Jamie swiped a blue mitten beneath his nose. "Yeah, Mom's busy, too."
Max trotted behind him and, spying Jamie, gave a whole-body wag. Logan slanted a leg across the door so she couldn't run out. She whined. "Don't you have any friends?"
Jamie shrugged carelessly. "They're all busy."
"What about Bobby?"
"He's at a hockey game watching his brother. Can I watch you?"
Hope shone bright in those hazel eyes and cut Logan to the quick. "Too dangerous. I'm using a saw."
"Oh." The pout nearly had Logan giving in. What could it hurt to have him watch? "What're you making?"
"A present. For your mom." Idiotic, really, to waste time on such a project. But he'd seen the walnut and the maple at Gus's store, and it had reminded him of the muffins Beth was so fond of making.
"What is it?"
"Can't tell you or it wouldn't be a surprise."
"Yeah, that's what Mom says, too."
"You go on home," he told Jamie when he felt himself weakening again. "I don't want to catch you on that ice, you hear?" Not with that pond half on his land.
"Yeah, I hear." Jamie kicked at the snow at the edge of the porch. "Can Max come out and play?"
Max squirmed even harder against his leg at the mention of her name. He planned to leave Max behind when he moved; she might as well get used to her new master. "Sure. Take her to your house."
Logan released his leg, and Max shot out. Boy and dog bounded down the path. "Wait, take her leash."
The last thing he needed was to have the stupid mutt hit by a car. He showed Jamie how to fit the leash in the collar, how to control the unruly dog, then went back to the cellar.
The jaws of a set of clamps held the light and dark pieces of maple and walnut he'd glued together. Once he shaped the piece, he still had hours of sanding to get the cutting board as smooth as he wanted. Giving a small smile he lifted the piece from the clamps, then transferred a muffin pattern to the wood with a pencil. A muffin to celebrate Beth's breakfast experiments. He hoped he would have enough time to oil the piece before Christmas in two days.
He was thinking of Beth, of seeing her later in the afternoon, of holding her, of getting lost in her. A small regret nagged him at the thought that he would have to leave the warmth of her bed to return to his own cold house before Jamie awoke. But in this game, no child would be a victim. He switched off the saw.
As he lifted his safety glasses, a noise upstairs didn't sound right. Barking. Max. What was the mutt up to?
The sound reached him again. Not right. Too close. Hadn't he told the kid to go home?
The next bark seemed to reach inside his heart and squeeze it tight. Something was wrong. Jamie. Nausea billowed. He dropped the wooden muffin and shot up the stairs. He flung the front door open and ran out without a coat.
"Max! Where are you?"
Her frantic barks came to him from the bottom of the hill. She strained and tugged. Her leash was caught beneath a bright green lump on the snow. Ice clogged Logan's veins.
Jamie.
Logan staggered, feeling as if his guts were being torn apart. No, please, not Jamie.
Heart pounding, he forced himself forward, then raced for the unmoving boy. God, no. Not again.
"Jamie!"
* * *
Beth cut and sliced vegetables for a stew, holding the telephone in the crook of her neck. She concentrated on each movement of the knife to keep her mind from straying to Logan. Eve was not making the task easy by insisting Beth air her feelings as if they were laundry. She wasn't exactly sure what those feelings were, except that they were jumbled, and she was confused.
She was slowly, surely falling in love. In love? No, that was crazy. She couldn't be in love. Not with Logan. But the tender bruise on her heart ached, denying her claim. How could she feel so much for Logan when she'd been so in love with Jim?
"I'm not going to leave you alone until you tell me what's going on," Eve said. "I'm worried about you."
"I'm fine." Then Beth sighed and felt it sweep all through her body. Tears swam up, and she swiped them away. I am not going to cry over this.
Maybe sharing wouldn't be so bad—she kept telling Logan so. She ought to listen to her own advice. "I think I'm in love, Eve."
"That's wonderful!"
"I don't want to love him." She added oil to the Dutch oven and turned on the burner beneath the pot.
"Why not?"
"He's going to leave." The meat sizzled, seeming to hiss a warning: you knew it, you knew it. And she had, even before she'd made the mistake of giving him her heart as well as her comfort. Sooner than later he would leave.
"You don't know that."
"I can feel it." She stirred the chunks of lamb around the pot. The moving-cartons still unpacked in his house shouted transiency. And the kitchen with its country garden was not a decor Logan would have chosen for himself. He was marking time.
"Talk to him."
"I don't want to pressure him." He already felt too much self-imposed stress. He couldn't forgive himself for watching his daughter die and not being able to save her, and he continued to punish himself with what-ifs and if-onlys. Being cheated out of the grace of closure that the court case could have given him hadn't helped his healing process. She was no prize, either, asking him to share her with her dead husband's fast-fading ghost. "He's already been hurt so much."
"All the more reason for you to talk to him."
She dumped the cut-up vegetables into the pot and churned the mixture. "Eve..."
"Beth, he needs to know what's in your heart."
"You don't understand." She thwacked the wooden spoon against the counter and unsnapped the cover from the container of broth. Her movement was jerky, and broth sloshed over the side onto her hand. "If I tell him I love him, I'll send him running."
And that scared her as much as Jim fading from her memory.
"Or make him realize he has something to live for, for a change..."
Eve went on, but something in Beth came to high alert. The first sharp bark sent her to the window above the sink. Nothing. No Jamie. No dog. She frowned, reached for a cloth and wiped her hands dry. Jamie had told her Logan had let Max come out and play.
"I told him to stay where I could see him," she said distractedly.
"What?"
"He's going to get an earful when I catch up with him." But her anger was soft-boiled, fast frittering into concern. A tingling of premonition skittered down her spine.
"Eve, I have to go." Beth dropped the phone, launched the cloth on the counter and ran.
She opened the back door and a blast of cold stole her breath.
"Jamie! Where are you?"
She got no answer, except Max's barks around the front. Frantic, frenzied barks as if the animal were hurt.
"James Andrew Lannigen. Answer me!"
Great. Logan had finally gotten attached to the dog and her son's carelessness had led Max to injury. She marched around the house ready to read Jamie the riot act. But something about Max's barks had a quality of urgency.
Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Her heart suddenly wanted to burst. Her breath choked through the narrowed opening of her lungs. She sped around the corner, jittery with adrenaline. Her gaze darted, trying to locate any movement. Panic rose, sticky and thick, setting her whole body shaking. "Jamie!"
Movement. Not Jamie. Logan.
Logan raced toward the fence at the bottom of the hill. Her
gaze dashed ahead. There beside a fence post was a frantic Max barking and leaping, fighting some unseen demon around the unmoving lump of her son's bright-green coat and red sledding saucer. Her heart gave a sickening thud.
"Jamie!" He wasn't talking. He wasn't moving. No, please, not Jamie. Don't take him, too!
On stocking feet, she slipped and slid her way across the street.
"Jamie, wake up, wake up," Logan shouted as he assessed the small body.
"What's wrong with him?" He's going to be all right. He has to be all right. She skidded to a halt, dropped to her knees and reached for her baby.
Logan's hand held hers at bay. "Don't move him. He hit his head on the fence post."
"Jamie." She choked. So pale, so pale. "Jamie, Mommy's here. Talk to me, sweetheart."
He looked as if he were asleep in the snow. A sob hitched in her chest.
"There's no blood," she said, pressing a fist against her mouth. "There's no blood. How come he's not moving?"
Helplessness rolled through her, weighing her down.
Logan moved the red knit cap aside, and she gasped at the swelling bruise on her son's forehead.
"Help him. Logan, please. Help him."
Her terror tore at Logan. Her skin was whiter than the snow. Her eyes were saucer-round with fear. Her body shuddered. But he could not take her in his arms. Not after sending her son away, not after leaving him outside unsupervised. And now the boy was hurt. On his land. On the rail he'd put up to keep the boy from trespassing. If he hadn't, Jamie would have safely sledded into the opening.
She wouldn't thank him for this deed.
Don't think. Don't feel. Jamie's alive. He's breathing. Keep him that way.
Why hadn't he thought to bring the damn cell phone with him? Logan pulled off his sweater and wrapped it around Jamie to stave off shock. "Look at me, Beth."
She lifted her gaze. The strain of worry and fear etched her face. His chest hurt at the sight, his hands fisted at Jamie's side, but he forced himself to speak in a slow, even way.
"Don't move him, Beth. Keep him warm. I'm going to call for help. I'm going to bring back some blankets."
