“I was trying to be impartial.”
“Congratulations, you win the Impartiality Award of the Year,” she bit off sarcastically. “Should look very nice next to your Indifferent Award.”
His eyes narrowed as he took in the accusation. “You think I’m indifferent?”
Kelsey raised herself up on her toes to be closer to his level. “I don’t think—I know. You are,” she declared. He took a step into her space, his temper dangerously flaring. Kelsey stood her ground. “I’m indifferent about who wins the World Series. I’m indifferent about who wins the Super Bowl. I’m even indifferent about what brand of coffee I drink as long as it’s strong and reasonably hot. I am not indifferent about you.” Morgan fairly shouted at her now.
A sensible person might have taken this time to move back, or at least back off. Kelsey wasn’t feeling very sensible right now.
“Ha!” she retorted, then turned away to continue packing.
Morgan grabbed her by her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “I didn’t think I had the right to stand in your way if this was what you wanted.”
She lifted her chin. “Nice speech, Donnelly. How long did it take you to convince yourself you were being noble instead of just running scared?”
His eyes narrowed even more. “You think that I’m scared?”
His eyes darkened. Another woman would have known that this wasn’t the time to get into his face. But another woman wasn’t on the verge of losing everything the way she was.
Kelsey tossed her head so that her blond hair went sailing over her shoulder. “Yes, I think you’re scared. Really scared. Completely and utterly scared out of your mind.”
“Of what?” His voice was low, dangerous.
She was out on a limb, but she wasn’t about to crawl back to safety, not until she’d had her say. “Of caring again. I got to you, Morgan Donnelly.” She jabbed a finger into his chest, emphasizing her point as she spoke. “For a very little while, I got to you,” she jabbed him again, “and it scared the hell out of you.”
He grabbed her finger before she could poke him a third time. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” she challenged pugnaciously.
“Yes.” He continued to hold on to the offending finger, keeping it wrapped in his hand as he spoke. “You didn’t get to me for a very little while—”
“I sure as hell—”
“For once in your life, will you shut up and listen?” he demanded, completely stunning her. “You didn’t get to me for a very little while.” He took a breath. “You got to me big-time. That was what scared me. Because my gut was twisting from wanting you. Because when we weren’t together, I kept finding myself counting off the minutes until we were. You were becoming too important to me. You were my morning and my night. My reason for doing, for being.
“I don’t like being dependent on anything.” Opening his hand, he released her index finger. “I’ve seen what dependency does. My father was dependent on my mother and when she died, he slowly went to pieces. He was a good, decent man and he fell apart, bit by bit until there was nothing left.
“And I started going the same route after Beth and Amy died. I finally, finally was getting myself together, and then you happened. You are nothing like Beth, as different from her as night was from day, and yet, I can’t breathe right without you around.”
She wasn’t going to let herself believe him, she wasn’t, Kelsey kept repeating to herself in the confines of her mind. Just some huge disappointment waiting for her in the wings if she believed him.
“So you’ve been holding your breath ever since we broke up?” she asked, disbelief vibrating in every syllable.
“Yes, I have,” he shot back. “And I can’t do it anymore. I thought I could, that it would get better as the days went by, but it just got worse. I felt as if my gut had been cut out without the benefit of an anesthetic.” He almost said “heart” instead of gut, but that would make him sound like some kind of wimp, and he wasn’t. He was just a guy who’d been hurting too much for too long. Every day without her was an eternity.
She could almost picture that and it made her cringe. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, ‘ouch,’” he echoed.
Her eyes held his as she tried to figure out if she was being a fool to believe him or a fool not to.
“So you’re telling me not to go?” she asked carefully.
In the last few days, he had become very aware of words and the burden they brought with them. “I’m asking you not to go.”
It occurred to Kelsey that, although it wasn’t very PC of her, she wanted him to make the initial demand. To stand in her way, yelling that love was making him behave like this.
She was most likely losing her mind—and it was all his fault. “Why? Why are you asking me not to go?”
Uncomfortable, he shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Your family’ll miss you.”
“I’m not flying into the Bermuda Triangle. I’ll be back.”
“Your mother’s pregnant. This is a difficult time for her. She needs you,” he urged.
“Very sensitive of you,” she said dismissively. “My mother has a whole support system in place. My father, my brothers, my sisters-in-law, they’re all there for her. They can get her through this.”
He shook his head. “That’s not the same thing as a daughter.”
“Granted, but again, I’ll be back,” she reminded him. Why was she doing this to herself? Why was she fishing for a response he wasn’t prepared or willing to give her?
“If she needs me, I can be back in five hours. Less if there’s a strong tailwind.”
“Sometimes,” he told her slowly, “five hours just isn’t fast enough.”
Was he talking about a life-and-death situation? Her mother was the healthiest person she knew, but things could change quickly. “So now you’re trying scare tactics to get me to stay?”
It was time to lower his shields. He realized it was his only chance. If that required making himself vulnerable, so be it. “I’ll try anything I have to to get you to stay.”
For a second, he’d left her speechless. “You know,” she pointed out quietly, “there is a much simpler way to do that.”
“What is it?”
Was he serious? Did he need a road map? Or was he just pulling her leg? “I’m not going to spell it out for you, Donnelly.” But then she did. Sort of. “But it does involve three little words.”
“Stay put, Kelsey?” he guessed, managing to keep a straight face.
“Try again,” Kelsey prompted.
He took her into his arms, but he still didn’t say what she wanted to hear. “This isn’t easy for me, Kelsey.”
“If it came easily to you, it wouldn’t mean anything.”
Holding Kelsey at arm’s length, Morgan looked at her for a long moment. “And if I say it, if I tell you those three words, you’ll stay?”
“If you say them and mean them,” she underscored, “yes, I’ll stay.”
His eyes held hers for what felt like an eternity. And then he said, “I love you.”
Morgan wasn’t kidding when he’d said it wasn’t easy for him to utter the words. The man seemed positively pained. “Now say it as if someone wasn’t putting a match to your feet.”
Gathering her closer so that her body fit against his, Morgan looked down into her face.
“I love you, Kelsey. God knows I don’t want to, but there’s nothing I can do about it. When I thought about never seeing you again, it made me feel so hollow inside, so empty, I could hardly stand it. I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to feel empty, having each day that goes by exactly like the one before it and the one after it. I want life to be a surprise again, the way it was when we were together.”
This wasn’t any easier to say, but he knew it was the only way. And she deserved to know what he was feeling.
“I want to be part of something. I want to be part of you, part of your family. I want the whole n
ine yards.” He framed her face, loving her so much that it hurt.
“Because living the way I was before you changed everything wasn’t living at all. It was just existing.”
She stared at him, stunned. His voice echoed in her head and she was afraid that she imagined all this. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Only if you think I’m proposing. Because I am. Badly,” he acknowledged, knowing his limitations. “But then, nobody has ever accused me of being a smooth talker.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” The grin in her eyes filtered down to her lips. “Sounds pretty smooth to me.”
Thank God she was going to stay. He wasn’t too late. “Then are you saying yes?”
He saw her eyes crinkle, the smile there making her eyes sparkle. “I’ve been saying yes all along, you big idiot. You just weren’t listening.”
“I thought you originally told me that there were no strings attached.”
Her slim shoulders moved up and then down. “I lied. I knew that if you suspected how I felt, you would have lost no time running for the hills. You almost did anyway.”
Morgan grinned at her as he drew his hand through her hair. “The hills are highly overrated.”
She’d made a run for them a time or two herself. “Tell me about it.”
He shook his head. “Maybe later. Right now, we’ve got three weeks to catch up on and I intend to start right now.” He began to unbutton her blouse slowly. She felt the chills beginning. “I love a take-charge guy.”
Morgan laughed then, really laughed. “The hell you do. You like bossing me around.”
But it didn’t matter. They had the rest of their lives to sort out their boundaries, he thought, and right now, all he wanted to do was merge those boundaries and lose himself in her.
It was the one place he felt at home.
Epilogue
D éjà vu.
This had to be déjà vu, Kelsey had thought.
Eight and a half months ago, Kelsey recalled, she’d gone through the very same thing: burst through the hospital doors practically before the electronic eye had time to pull them automatically back, her heart lodged in the middle of her throat.
Except that eight and a half months ago it had been fear that had been coursing through her veins. This time it had been anticipation and excitement that surged through her. And, eight and a half months ago, her mother had sworn her to secrecy, so she’d made her break-neck odyssey alone. It was no secret now what had sent her mother off to the hospital, once again huddled in the backseat of Morgan’s car while a siren pealed a warning for other cars to pull over.
Moreover, Kelsey had thought gratefully, she definitely wasn’t alone. Morgan was driving and her father was in the backseat with her mother, holding tightly on to her hand and telling her to hang on, that everything was going to be all right.
hand and telling her to hang on, that everything was going to be all right.
Not only was her father here with her, but her brothers and their wives, too, and Cody. They had all come, splitting up in two vehicles that had followed Morgan’s, staying closer than shadows.
The only calm one in the bunch, relatively speaking, had been Cody. The little boy was more excited about the prospect that sometime during this special night, Santa would make an appearance and leave presents not only beneath his Christmas tree, but the one he’d just left behind at his grandparents’ house. After all, it was Christmas Eve. The idea that a baby was about to make his or her appearance in the world any minute now came in as a very distant second. Cody had wanted to ride to the hospital with “Uncle Morgan,” hoping to be allowed to man the siren or the flashing lights. Trent had managed to convince the boy that it would be more fun on the return trip, when things weren’t so hectic. Cody had reluctantly agreed, but only after Morgan had promised him that he could indeed turn on the siren for a minute.
Morgan.
Her Morgan.
As his wife of two months, she had the right to think of him that way. Funny how this baby had brought them initially together and now everything had come full circle. Arriving at Blair Memorial, Morgan had pulled up in front of one of the hospital’s valets. The latter, wearing a Santa cap, looked uncertainly at the flashing lights atop freshly promoted Detective Donnelly’s car. His confusion grew as two more cars pulled up directly behind the first, and people started pouring out.
“Got a woman about to give birth,” Morgan called out. Instantly, the second valet rushed off to fetch a wheelchair, the bells tied to his shoes jangling as he ran. The smell of pine greeted them the moment Bryan pushed Kate’s wheelchair into the E.R. waiting area. There was a Christmas tree next to the entrance. They were the only ones there. From all appearances, the hospital was experiencing a slow night.
That changed the moment her family came pouring in, Kelsey observed.
“She’s going to be fine,” Morgan had whispered in her ear as a nurse and an orderly took her mother and father to the maternity floor. Morgan pressed for the next available elevator car.
“Of course she is,” Kelsey had retorted, her voice firm to convince herself.
That had been five hours ago.
Now, here they all were, crowded into the maternity floor waiting area. Cody was curled up in his mother’s lap, asleep despite his efforts to remain awake. The rest of them were watching the doorway intently for any signs of someone coming to notify them that the newest Marlowe had finally arrived. The air was thick with tension.
“Something’s wrong,” Kelsey said suddenly, unable to rein in her agitation.
“Some babies take longer than others,” Miranda tried to reassure her.
Kelsey fisted her hands at her sides. “But her water broke,” she insisted. Weren’t babies supposed to come popping out right after that? Wasn’t that why they’d raced to the hospital like that?
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Laurel told her, slowly stroking her son’s hair as he went on sleeping. “It can still take a long time.”
Kelsey wasn’t convinced. “I’m going to find someone to ask,” she declared, heading for the doorway. But just as she was about to explode out into the festively decorated hallway, her father, dressed in green scrubs, cut her off at the threshold. Bryan Marlowe grinned from ear to ear and looked almost like a teenager.
Instantly, everyone was on their feet except for Laurel. They circled him like hungry birds around a crust of bread.
“Well?” Kelsey demanded.
“It’s a boy. Born one minute after midnight,” her father announced proudly.
“I think there’s something in the hospital guidelines that says you can’t have twelve people at a bedside,” the night nurse declared as she walked into Kate Marlowe’s room and saw the crowd gathered around the maternity floor’s only new patient in the last twelve hours.
“Oh, please,” Kate entreated the older woman. “Just for a few minutes. It’s Christmas,” she added as a finalizing argument. Bryan smiled warmly at his wife, looking down at the son who measured his age in hours. “Yes,” he agreed. “It certainly is.”
Morgan, his arm around Kelsey’s waist, bent his head and kissed her hair softly. He’d never thought that he could feel this way again. That anything would cause his heart to open like this.
“This give you any ideas?” he asked Kelsey in a low whisper.
An expression he couldn’t quite fathom was on her lips. “I was going to save this for later,” Kelsey answered, “but I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you.”
Puzzled, he stared at her. “Tell me what?”
Her face lit up as she whispered, “Merry Christmas, Morgan. You’re going to be a daddy.”
Speechless, overjoyed, Morgan swept his wife up into his arms and kissed her in full view of everyone—including his newest brother-in-law. It certainly was a Merry Christmas, he thought. From this day forward.
END
Dear Reader,
I didn’t want to write this book. As
long as I didn’t tell Kelsey’s story, I had one more book in the Marlowes’ saga. But it wasn’t fair to Kelsey so, here we are, watching the last of Kate Marlowe’s children find her soul mate.
Kelsey Marlowe has a tough time finding love. She’s feisty, independent and has four brothers eager to interrogate and dismiss every suitor. But now the Marlowe boys are all married, and Kelsey has become her own worst enemy in the pursuit of love. When she does find an irresistible man, she discovers that he comes with not just baggage, but scars. Despite the chemistry, the romance seems doomed before it ever takes off. Only Kate can see through the smoke screens between her daughter and the fine young police officer. How can a mother help bring them together?
I hope you enjoy this last installment of KATE’S BOYS…and daughter, too. As ever, I thank you for reading and wish you someone to love who loves you back. All the best,
Marie Ferrarella
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4287-0
A LAWMAN FOR CHRISTMAS
Copyright © 2009 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella
[Kate's Boys 05] - A Lawman for Christmas Page 15
