Tossing away the next layer of tissue paper uncovered three CDs—well, actually four since one was a boxed set—bound together with a green ribbon that matched the box and a yellow card that matched the ribbon from the outside of the box. She read the card first. “Let’s brainwash this one early on as to what good music really is.” That brought a soft laugh as she recalled Russ telling her how his dad always complained about his choice in music.
She smiled, scanning the three titles: Miles Davis—Kind of Blue, The Beatles—Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Sting—Sting Live in Berlin.
She placed the CDs behind her and uncovered the bottom layer. Tied together were...two leather journals? She pulled them out of the box and looked closer. Not journals. Calendars. One for this year and the other for next. A card dangled from their ribbon also.
“Bring these tonight. We’ll begin making plans for the future.”
What did that mean...plans for the future?
Her insides gripped with apprehension, and she had the fiercest, most unnerving impulse to throw her toiletries back into the suitcase and hightail it to a hotel.
“Stop it, Maggie. You’re overreacting. Reading way more into this than it calls for.” She talked herself off the ledge and eventually into the bathroom to get ready for dinner.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that tonight was going to be memorable...though not in a good way.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MOST NIGHTS WERE pleasant in Carlsbad, but this one rated somewhere between spectacular and perfect. Dinner—both food and service—had been outstanding. A light, balmy breeze stirred the flowers in the pots beside their table—their very private table, with no one near them, on the restaurant’s patio. Despite the warmth, the waiter had insisted on lighting the small fire pit in the center of their table just for ambience. And Jeff couldn’t remember a time when Mags had looked more beautiful. The fire brought a glow to her fair complexion and sparkled in her eyes when she looked at him.
The effect was enchanting.
She’d been uptight when she’d gotten out of the cab but had visibly relaxed over the course of dinner. Now she stopped perusing the dessert menu long enough to catch him staring at her...again. She shook her head, but her lips curved up at the edges. “Would you stop?”
“Don’t think I can,” he admitted. “I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes off you.”
“You mean my cleavage.” She hid the round neckline behind the menu.
It was the same dress she’d worn in Chicago, and she’d been almost apologetic about wearing it, explaining how it was getting too cool at home to wear it—and she was afraid after this pregnancy, she might not be able to fit into it again.
He didn’t care why she wore it—only that she looked amazing in it.
“Well, there is that,” he agreed. “But it’s the face I’m most interested in. If this one’s a girl, I hope she’s a miniature version of you.”
Maggie squinted an eye his direction before returning her attention to the sweets on the menu. “That would be only fair since our son is you made over. I have him ten months of the year, but he looks, walks, sounds and acts like your clone.”
Jeff winced. Russ had been on his mind all day. He loved that boy to a magnitude he didn’t even know existed eighteen years ago. But this time, he knew what he was in for. He’d only learned of this other child twenty-four hours ago, yet the bond was already there.
The thought of Mags leaving tomorrow created an overwhelming feeling of emptiness.
“Taking this long to decide probably means I don’t need dessert.” She set the menu to the side and leaned over the arm of her chair to retrieve something from her purse. She came up with the new pen and both of the calendars he’d sent her. “I promised you planning after the meal, so let’s plan.” The edge had returned to her voice. She flipped the first calendar to November and held her pen poised. “Russ gets the entire week off, so what day do you think you’ll come in?”
Her sudden strictly business attitude made Jeff shift uncomfortably in his seat. “What day do you want me to come in? I’m assuming I’ll be staying with you, so do you want some time alone with Russ first, or do you want me to be there when he arrives? Maybe I can come in a day or two early?”
“I think the day of is fine. That’ll be Saturday. Try to get there early enough that you’ll be at the house when he gets home. We may as well tell him first thing.” She made a notation in the blank for the third Saturday in November and breathed in a deep breath. “What else?”
“I hope to be able to attend some of your doctor appointments. I’d like to be there for the first heartbeat and the first ultrasound.”
Maggie’s lips compressed. “That’s a lot of traveling.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be worth it.”
It was a lot of traveling, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to swing the cost and the time away from work—hadn’t planned that far yet—but he’d figure it out. Too many other things had occupied his mind today, and he pressed on to those. “I was hoping maybe this year we could do Christmas together, too.”
He watched her swallow hard as she laid down the pen, and he had the distinct feeling their perfect night was about to slip down a few ranks.
“We need to get something straight.” She eyed him levelly, and the grim set of her mouth told him he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. “I appreciate how supportive you’ve been. Your reaction to the news has been everything I could have hoped for and more. But making plans for the future as if we’re a couple is a little silly, don’t you think?” Before he could respond she went on. “I mean, yes, I’d love for you to be at the birth. I want that. But we can’t pretend things are going to be much different than they were after we divorced and you moved back here. Fifteen hundred miles separate us. Trips back and forth are expensive, and neither of us will allow the child to travel alone for years. A lot can happen...in years.”
The quiver of her chin coiled his stomach into a knot. He laid his hand on top of the one she rested on the table. “Like what? What are you trying to say?”
“My heart can’t take this, Jeff.” She shook her head slightly and dropped her eyes to the book on the table. “It’s not good for me to be around you this much.” She pulled her hand from beneath his and laid it in her lap. Lifting her gaze back to his, she gave a long blink.
He leaned close, his heart beating a staccato rhythm against his chest wall. “You’re afraid you’ll fall back in love with me.”
“Yes...no...I won’t allow myself to fall back in love with you. We’ve talked about this before, but being with you—off and on and off and on—will only keep me in a constant state of upheaval. I can’t—won’t—allow myself to become dependent on you again...in any way. Not physically. Not financially. Most certainly, not emotionally.” She reached up and closed the calendar. “I don’t want to make plans for the future with you. We’ll just have to play it by ear.”
That she still loved him was evident in the tears she held back...but she held them back. What could he do to make her let go and open up to him...give them the chance they deserved?
His heart leaped into his mouth as he scooted his chair over until he could take both of her hands. “We still love each other, Mags. We both know that. Let’s give it another try.” She tugged at her hands but he held them firmly, determined to make her hear him out. “Get married. Live together. Raise this child together. We can make it work this time.”
“No.” Her head wobbled, but her voice held firm. “I won’t do that to you again.”
“That...?”
“Force you into a marriage.”
“Do I sound like I’m being forced? I want this.”
“You think you want it...now...smitten by the idea of a do-over. But ten seconds ago, you said ‘Let’s give i
t another try.’” A tear broke free and slid down her cheek, and he reluctantly let go of one of her hands so she could dab it with her napkin. “I can’t try anymore, Jeff. I’ve failed twice. If I ever get married again, it has to be a sure thing. I can’t open my heart again for anything less.”
“It was just a figure of speech,” he protested, and the sinking feeling in his stomach told him he was losing ground. “Nothing in life is a sure thing. Life’s a gamble. ‘You pays your money, you makes your choice.’”
Her free hand covered her belly protectively. “I won’t gamble when the happiness of my child is the stakes.”
God, she could be infuriating! “You’re twisting my words.”
“Love. Marriage vows. Promises. They’re all just words.” Her tears began to flow in a steady stream, coming faster than she could dab at them. He finally freed her other hand and leaned back in his chair. “You may have forgotten what it was like, but I haven’t,” she whispered through clenched jaws. “You’ve been a wonderful father, but you were a terrible husband.”
Damn! Her words hit with the force of a semi.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the waiter approach and do an about-face. Then Jeff realized the three elderly women at a table near the front of the patio were eyeing them and whispering. He didn’t want Maggie’s distress to become a spectacle...and this was not the place to analyze his own.
The joyride he’d been on for the past six weeks came to a screeching halt, and he felt himself being hurled through the air.
He braced, knowing with absolute certainty the impact would hurt like hell.
* * *
“YOU WANT TO finish this at home?” Jeff asked, and Maggie wondered that he could keep his voice so gentle while the aura around him pulsed with pain and frustration.
She nodded in lieu of speaking, aware she’d already said way too much but maybe not nearly enough. She hadn’t realized her intentions were to hurt him until the words slipped out, but the bitterness was undeniable, the emotions behind it real.
He signaled the waiter for the check and paid it while the silence between them grew heavier with each passing minute. They were both aware the defensive wall they’d built between the past and the present had finally cracked, and the vast ocean of who they used to be would crash through any second now.
Walking to the car, Jeff took her elbow as she stepped off the curb and kept a hand at the small of her back. The heat, which before had been a pleasant sensation, now felt like a branding iron of guilt.
She’d let this go too far despite her better judgment. She’d known from the first moment she’d seen him again—at the airport in Chicago—that she needed to keep her distance. Had reminded herself of it daily since then. Her mom had tried to warn her, as had her dad, Emmy and Faith. But no...she had to prove to them all she was a changed woman...had to prove it to herself.
This is what it had come to.
The anger and frustration charging the atmosphere in the car peeled the years away like layers of cheap shellac. By the time they reached Jeff’s place, most of her exposed area lay between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-seven. The dark and lonely years when the only thing that spurred her to get out of bed in the morning—or even to take the next breath—was her son. The years when she blamed Jeff Wells for every misery life threw her way.
They stalked from the parking garage, hardly glancing each other’s way, and when they reached his front door, he pushed it open and motioned her in first. He followed her and she jumped at the sound of his keys hitting the table with force, then sliding off the other side to land on the floor.
She immediately made for the bathroom.
“Do not walk away from me now,” Jeff growled behind her. “We’re having this out once and for all.”
She refused to acknowledge his order by turning around. “I’ll be back,” she snarled over her shoulder.
She took her time in the bathroom, knowing she had to pull herself together, refusing to face him as the red-as-a-beet apoplectic crybaby she saw in the mirror. She applied a cool washcloth to her overheated face, then reapplied a dusting of her powder foundation. The few minutes of respite put her somewhat back in control of her emotional state.
Oh, yeah, her blood still simmered, and she would have her say, but she would do it with the grace of the more experienced woman she recognized in her reflection, not the younger version of herself.
She’d fought hard, damn it, for those ten years. She refused to lose them now.
With a purposeful stride, she walked back to the living room, where she found Jeff leaning against the wet bar, legs crossed leisurely. His coolness might have irritated her if she hadn’t noticed the muscle twitching in his jaw, which gave away his true state.
“Go ahead, Mags. Let me have it.” His chin jutted forward. “Tell me why I was such a terrible husband.”
She crossed her arms, then forced herself to uncross them. But she allowed her fingers to curl into tight fists as her arms fell to her sides. “Well, for starters...despite being gone sixteen hours a day, you tried every way in the world to control me, calling constantly, asking where I was, what I was doing.”
“I was worried about you.”
“You weren’t checking on me, you were checking up on me—trying to dictate what I could and couldn’t do, where I could go...with whom.”
His eyes bored into hers. “You were nineteen and acted fifteen, so I had to act forty. You were out of control, and one of us had to be the adult in the relationship.”
“I didn’t need to be controlled,” she snapped. “I was fighting to become my own person. I’d gone from living with my parents to living with you with barely even a year of freedom to my name.”
“But somebody had to watch out for you, Mags. You were reckless and pregnant with my child. You acted impetuously...like the time you dove off Sol’s boat when you had no idea how deep the lake was at that spot.”
She’d forgotten about the incident, and yeah, it might’ve been stupid, but it was only once. “I had to account for every dime I spent—” She ignored his comment and went on. “You kept the checkbook, which meant I couldn’t even buy you a birthday present without your knowing exactly how much it cost and where it came from.”
“You paid no attention to the cost of anything.” His hands shoved into his front pockets, one of them coming out with a couple of coins, which he shuffled back and forth. “Eli and Rosemary had always lavished you with anything you wanted. You were spoiled rotten, and I couldn’t give you the lifestyle you were used to. I was busting my ass, working two jobs, and you were spending all our money—”
“It was never our money. It was your money—” her finger punched the air in his direction “—that you allowed me to use occasionally.”
“You were spending our money—” he ground the words out “—on frivolous shit.”
The nineteen-dollar palazzo pant outfit sprang to mind, making her feel silly for even having this conversation. But she shoved the awkwardness aside. There was something cathartic about this. It was moving her toward something, though she had no idea what. “You suffocated me!” Her fingernails dug into her sweaty palms. “You made me feel like I was living in a bubble and the oxygen was running out.”
“We did live in a bubble. But it was you who insisted on staying in Taylor’s Grove in the house right next to your parents. You ran to them with every little thing, blaming me for everything that went wrong. It was never just me against you like a normal couple. Your parents always took your side and made it three against one, and at twenty-one, that felt like me against the whole damn world! Your world. Your town.” His nostrils flared.
There it was. Finally! A strange sense of satisfaction rolled through her.
“I had a wife and a baby to take care of,” he continued. “I was trying to make a liv
ing, go to school, keep the scholarship that I eventually ended up losing, be a husband and father, and things were turning out totally different from the way I thought they’d be when I moved to Kentucky from California. Everything felt out of control.”
He scratched his head roughly, his telltale sign of frustration, but his honesty dredged up what lay at the bottom of Maggie’s resentment—the truth she’d never been able to put into words, even while she’d been in counseling. It was like she’d stepped out of her body and was viewing herself with a new perspective...because, of course, she was.
She wasn’t that person anymore. Would never allow herself to be that person again.
“And the more you controlled me...the more I let you control me—” her voice suddenly went very quiet, all the anger that had infused it gone “—the more I felt you didn’t love the real me. You tried to make me into someone I wasn’t, as if you were afraid that, if you let me be my own person, I was going to turn into someone you didn’t like...and certainly couldn’t love.”
Jeff’s chin lifted as if she’d connected with an upper cut. His mouth opened and closed, and he ran his hand down his face.
She took the quiet moment to sink into the chair, drained and exhausted by the past six weeks—the past eighteen years.
“And that’s why I can’t think about marriage to you again, Jeff. You still control me. You talk me into dinner in Chicago, accompanying you to Lake Geneva, letting you stay at my house...” She pointed to the calendars protruding from her purse. “And making plans for the future.” She shrugged and took a long breath. “I lose myself in you. Forget who I am. Even after all this time.”
A shadow of sadness and acceptance settled on his face—she recognized it because she felt it, too.
“I...I don’t know what to say, Mags,” he said at last. “I never meant to make you feel that way. I’m sor—”
She held her hand out to stop him and shook her head. “Don’t say you’re sorry. Please. Haven’t you been listening? Neither of us should ever have to apologize for being who we are. We just don’t work together—at least, not for the long-term...and not for the right reasons.”
My Way Back to You (Harlequin Large Print Super Romance) Page 19
