Larger Than Life

by Alison Kent

  It was that connection she'd come here for. It was one she wanted to test without making promises. Life offered no guarantees; she knew that. But she couldn't let Spencer leave until she'd fixed what she'd broken so badly. If she wasn't so tense, she'd laugh. How could it take her so many times to get this right?

  She knocked on his door, took a deep breath when he answered, "Yeah. Come in," and did, pushing the door open into what her idea had always been of a jock's bedroom. Trophies and ribbons, posters and photos. And Spencer on his back on the bed, tossing a football into the air and catching it. Toss, catch, toss, catch—until he looked over and saw her.

  Then he didn't toss anymore. He just stared, took her in from head to toe, finally cleared his throat and asked, "Whaddaya want?"

  A better reception, for one thing. She closed the door, crossed toward the desk next to the bed, set her purse beside his computer keyboard, swiveled the chair around and sat. Demurely. Knees together. Feet together. Jesus Lord, she even kept her hands laced together in her lap.

  "I wanted to see you."

  He started tossing the ball again. "Look your fill. I'm not going anywhere."

  Or so he thought now. "Good. I like a captive audience."

  "I thought you wanted to see me. Not talk to me."

  She clucked her tongue. "Now, when have you known me to do anything without talking?"

  Ball in his hand, he glanced over, snorted. "That would be never."

  "Exactly." And then she paused because as she'd suspected, everything she'd planned to say was gone. "Here's the thing, Spencer. I'm a mess. I mean, I was already a mess when you met me, but the other day ... in my apartment"— she gestured with one hand—"that sorta made everything worse."

  Spencer sat up then, swung his legs over the side of the bed and faced her, his big hands gripping the ball, his elbows on his knees. "I think I asked you about that. About dredging up all that shit not being the best way to get it out of your head."

  "Oh, no, baby. I don't mean what we did." Eyes closed, she pressed her fingertips to her temples, smiled to get her bearings, and tried again. "I mean I messed things up with you. And me."

  "I didn't think there was a you and me," he said, his voice pitched deep and low.

  "I didn't think there could be." She opened her eyes and looked at him then. At his irises, which almost matched the green in the living room color scheme. At his lips, which she knew so well and wanted to feel again, to taste again, to see smile. At his hands, which appeared to belong to the football he held.

  He had such a huge future in front of him. She wondered what she'd been thinking coming here. "I'm still not sure there can be."

  He shook his head, stared at the ball. "I don't get you, Candy. I really don't."

  "Then I guess I'm doing a damn fine job with the mysterious older woman thing," she said and winked.

  "You're doing a damn fine job screwing with my head." He pushed to his feet, walked around her to the room's window. "If that's what you wanted to hear ..."

  She got up and followed, standing behind him and hesitating only a few seconds before she slid her arms around his waist and pressed her body to his back. "You're such a beautiful boy, Spencer Munroe. I never wanted to hurt you. Why would I when everything about you is good?"

  He snorted, and he didn't touch her. But neither did he push her away.

  "I'm serious," she said, slipping around to stand in front of him. "You're honest and kind and loving. You're fun. A talented athlete. You're also sexy as hell."

  Another snort, but his face colored, and she knew the sound was more about being embarrassed than mad. She brought up her fingers, gently cupped his face.

  "Hurting you makes no sense, baby. Not when being with you makes me happy." She stopped to swallow the knot of insecurity balled up in her throat. "And makes me think there might be more to me than the ability to string beads on a wire."

  This time, before he frowned down, before he placed his palms on her shoulders, he tossed the football to the bed. Candy heard it bounce on the bedspread, but most of all she heard the hitch in Spencer's breathing. Unless what she had heard was the hitch in her own.

  "I know you don't want to hear this, Candy—"

  Please don't say it. Please say it. Please say it. Please don't.

  "—but I love you." His Adam's apple dipped up and down as he swallowed. His expressive eyes darkened like a forest of pine. "I've never said that to any girl. Ever. And I didn't plan to say it to you." His voice softened and shook. "Not when you were always blowing off talking about yourself. I didn't want to love a girl I didn't know."

  And now she couldn't see him at all because of her own silly tears. "Why would you want to love me now when you know everything?"

  He slid his arms around her, pulled her to his chest. His heart beat beneath her ear like it was trying to hip and hop right out of his chest and into hers to dance. "You trusted me enough to tell me what you've never told anyone but Neva. I may be a hick and I may be young, but I'm not stupid. I know what that means."

  "Then maybe you could tell me?" She laughed, she sobbed. She was ruining the makeup she'd spent so much time on.

  She'd wanted to come here looking her best, to come here being her best. To show her beautiful boy that what he'd learned about her wasn't all of who she was. That it didn't change anything about the things he made her feel. That driving him away just seemed easier to bear than watching him run when he discovered her past.

  "It means that I'm more to you than a good fuck," he said, chuckling a little bit. "And I think that means you're going to miss me."

  "Oh, baby. I am. I so am." She pulled away then, looked up and smiled. "But I'm thrilled that you're going. School's going to be the best decision you've ever made. Well, besides dating me."

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I'm not sure it wasn't made for me. I play football. It's what I do. What I've always done. Just like you string beads."

  She slapped at his shoulder. "I do a lot more than string beads, and you know it."

  "God, Candy." A shudder ran through his body, and he hooked an elbow around her neck and pulled her close. "School may be the best decision, but leaving you is going to be the hardest."

  "You have to promise me something, Spencer," she said, breathing him in, memorizing everything about the way they fit, knowing she'd remember forever his tenderness. "You can't think about me. Not about hurting me, or about how I'd feel about what you're doing. Once you leave, you're free."

  "And if I come back?"

  "To visit? Or for good?"

  "Either. Both."

  "Well, we'll see." It was all she'd let herself promise. She was young, but he was younger. Neither of them needed a heavy commitment when they both had so much growing up to do. But something less binding would be nice. "Spencer?"

  "Candy?"

  She smiled to herself. "Would you go out with me tonight?"

  Canting his upper body away from hers, he frowned down. "Out? Like on a date?"

  Teasingly wide-eyed, she looked up and nodded. "Dinner and dancing."

  "Around here? You've got to be kidding."

  "Not around here, no. I thought we could drive to El Paso. I brought my car." She stepped back, gave him a full once-over. Not bad for a white boy. "You'd need to bring a change of clothes. And pajamas. If you wear them."

  He shoved both hands back through his hair, laced them on top of his head. "You want me to spend the night. With you. In El Paso."

  She nodded, braced her hands on the window ledge and sat back. "Does that scare you?"

  "Are you kidding? After last weekend? I don't think there's anything you can do to scare me."

  Or so he thought. "Even telling your father I'm taking you away?"

  That caused him to gulp, but then a wicked light lit up his eyes, and he grinned in that way he had. The way that reminded her exactly why she adored him as much as she did.

  "You know," he began, "it'll go down easier if you let me driv
e your car."

  "Is that so?" she asked with a laugh, thinking it might actually be worth crossing her fingers if doing so would bring this one back to her for good.

  "Was that Spencer I just saw driving that Jaguar?" Jeanne asked, walking into the kitchen from the mudroom carrying groceries.

  "It was." Yancey pushed back from the table where he'd been waiting and took the load from her arms. "You have more bags in the car?"

  "Just this one," she said, shaking her head, frowning as he set the bag on the countertop, set the milk in the fridge. "Was that Candy he was with?"

  "Yep."

  "That's her car?"

  "Uh-huh." He didn't mean to be abrupt. He just didn't want to talk about Candy or Spencer. Right now, the only person he wanted to spend the evening with was his wife— which would work to his favor if she wasn't worrying about the boy, he finally admitted, and took a deep breath. "She's taking him to El Paso for a night of dinner and dancing. I think she mentioned having reservations at Billy Crews."

  Jeanne's hands went to her hips. Her eyebrows lifted. "And you let him go?"

  "Sure." Damn but it was hard to keep a straight face when he knew what he knew. Or what he thought he knew. More secrets discovered when hauling the trash to the burn bin. And this was a secret he couldn't wait to share. "It'll do him good. He's been moping around way too much lately."

  "Why shouldn't he mope?" his wife asked, carrying rice and vegetable oil to the pantry. "He's missed her."

  Yancey dismissed the idea with a snort, stacking a block of cheddar and a block of mozzarella on a shelf in the fridge. "It hasn't even been a week."

  Jeanne came behind him and moved the cheese to the lower drawer. "A week he's spent thinking he wouldn't be seeing her again."

  "Which is damn stupid when you take into consideration the size of this town. Everybody sees everybody sometime." He folded the grocery bag, slid it into the narrow cabinet where Jeanne kept them. And then he took her by the hand and wouldn't let her go.

  "Yancey!" she exclaimed, chuckling as he led her down the first-floor hallway to their bedroom. "What are you doing? It's the middle of the afternoon!"

  It was, and he couldn't have cared less. Especially since he'd been waiting forever for her to get back from her errands. He never had been much good at holding in a surprise. He was amazed she had held in this one. Being married to the woman this long, he was usually much better at reading her.

  He stopped at their bedroom doorway, turned and leaned his forearm on the door jamb while he waited. Her expectant gaze raised to meet his; she was frowning even as she smiled. "Yancey? What's going on?"

  He indicated the doorknob with a twitch of his chin. "Go on in."

  "I'm almost afraid to," she said with a bit of a laugh, but she did. She turned the knob, gave the door the shove she knew it needed. And then she gasped, both hands flying up to cover her mouth. "Oh, Yancey!"

  He'd never been the romantic sort. One of those shortcomings that he just never seemed to be able to overcome. He loved his wife dearly. He couldn't imagine having lived his life without her around. But showing it in the way women wanted had never come naturally. He was a lug and he knew it. Which sure as hell didn't explain the way watching her now had him choking up like some old cow.

  Jeanne walked to the foot of the bed and stopped. On her dresser, candles burned from the holiday candlesticks, the only ones he'd been able to find. The rose petals on the bed weren't as plentiful as he'd wanted.

  But stripping all the flowers in the arbor behind the house hadn't seemed fair. She put so much work into tending the bushes. The same work she put into tending to their son, to their house, and to him.

  He couldn't have been easy to live with, the job he had to do, the worries she had to have brooded about, whether her life would've been better in Dallas, whether he would keep his promise to love their son.

  "Oh, Yancey. I love you, but this makes me want to ask you who died." She laughed nervously, walking over and placing her palms on his chest. "I love this. It's a wonderful surprise. But now you've got to tell me what's going on before I start imagining all manner of things."

  So much for his attempts at romance, he mused with no small amount of self-deprecation. He took hold of his wife's hands, so small in mYown, so cool until he touched her, as if she needed him for warmth the same way he needed her to live.

  "I thought maybe you had something you wanted to tell me?" he prompted, keeping her close while he rubbed her fingers, watching as she blinked away her frown of confusion and realization dawned.

  She gasped. "You know? How could you know?"

  He watched her face color, a soft pink that matched the petals on the bed. The fact that she could still blush, that she was still shy with him years later left him feeling like he would take on the world for her all over again. "You'd be surprised what tumbles into the burn bin from the trash."

  She closed her eyes, shook her head, moved her hands up and looped them around his neck. "I haven't gone to the doctor yet. I wanted to tell you after I was positive."

  "That pink line looked pretty positive to me." He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her. "How're you feeling? Have you been sick?"

  "Not really." She brushed the fringe of bangs from her eyes, one hand toying with the hair at his nape, the other with his shirt's top button. "Maybe a little queasy, but I've been blaming that on nerves."

  "What've you had to be nervous about? Telling me?" His breath caught in his throat as he asked, "Deciding what you want to do?"

  Both of her hands stilled. "There was no decision to make. You've wanted this for so long."

  "Don't make this be about me." He wouldn't have it, wouldn't stand for it. Couldn't live with it any other way; it choked him up to think she'd make any sacrifice for him. "It can't be. Everything's always been about us. What's best for you and me."

  "I have to admit I've been thrown off by the idea of being sixty-three when this child is twenty," she said in a soft whisper as she slid his top button through its buttonhole and moved to the next. "And it's not easy to picture a forty-year-old Spencer with his twenty-year-old sibling."

  He looked down. Her fingers had reached the last visible button. She unbuckled his belt, unfastened his pants, pulled his shirttail free, and finished what she'd started. Once she had, she slid her arms around his bare waist, rested her cheek against his bare chest.

  It wasn't easy to know what to do. He'd meant what he'd said. Their life together had always been about being together. Decisions made as a couple. Sharing the burdens as well as the joy. Parenting their son. He didn't want her thinking of this unplanned pregnancy as a debt she owed him.

  "Yancey?" Her breath tickled the hair on his chest. "You're awfully quiet."

  "Why now?" The question burst out before he could stop it. "We've talked about this. About finances and my job, needing a bigger place, another college fund, downsizing Christmas. The way athletics for one child, the games on the road, the booster club and barbeques, ended up replacing family time—"

  "Yes. We've talked about all of those reasons. In doing so we also talked around the truth." She stepped back far enough to look up into his eyes. Hers were misty, and her mouth quivered.

  His wasn't so steady itself. "You mean whether or not I would love another child more than I love Spencer."

  Her fingers stroking his back trembled. "No, Yancey. Not that. Never that. I've always known how much you love Spencer. And I know you. Another child would never replace him in your heart. But what we didn't talk about was me not wanting to be pregnant again. That I couldn't face the memories it brought back. The guilt of what I'd done. To you. To us."

  "What do you mean, what you'd done?" He used his hands on her shoulders to set her away, and crossed the room to the window. He braced a forearm overhead on the frame and stared out through the blinds at the street where they'd lived for so long. "You were a victim. One in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I'm the one who took you ther
e. That's eaten at me for twenty years. I've wanted to turn back the clock more times than I can tell you."

  He heard the squeak of springs as she climbed up onto the bed, heard her inhale the scent of the roses, heard her sigh. "I want you to know something, Yancey Munroe. I have never ever ever blamed you for what happened to me that night. We went to that party together. As a couple. If anything, I blame myself. Drinking as much as I did was a foolish, foolish thing."

  Yancey turned, looked at the woman he'd loved for more than half of his life sitting in the middle of the bed they'd shared for almost as long, rose petals surrounding her, candlelight in her hair. He didn't think she had ever seemed as beautiful to him as she did now.

  His chest drew up so tightly, he wasn't sure he could speak. "I don't want being pregnant to cause you to relive any of that. I have Spencer and I have you, and my life couldn't be any more perfect. I love you, Jeanne. I don't want you to be hurt all over again."

  Her face softened. She patted the bed, and he pushed away from the window and joined her, cocking one hip up onto the edge of the mattress. "I've suspected that I might be pregnant for almost a month now. I've done nothing but think about what it makes me feel. I haven't thought about the hurt or the past at all. Only about the present. And the future. And you know what? I feel absolute joy."

  He waited several seconds for her to change her mind. To add what she'd left out, but she didn't. She only met his gaze as she always did once she'd spoken her mind. He closed his eyes for a long moment, opened them slowly. She was still there, still his wife, still his love.

  And she was carrying his child. He thought he would die from the flooding rush of emotions. "That's it? Are you sure?"

  She nodded, grinned. "Well, there is the absolute terror of having to keep up with a toddler at my age."

  "You're the youngest forty-two-year-old I know," he said as a smile spread over his face like daybreak on the horizon. "Except maybe for me."

  "Trust me. You'll be feeling your age in your bones soon enough. You'll be running and jumping and swinging and climbing and sliding—"

  "Okay, okay," he said with a laugh. He was going to be a father again. They were going to have another baby. It was a gift he'd never expected, and what a lucky man he was. "I'm aching already, if it makes you feel any better."