She was mortified. She’d never convince him she wanted him out of her life if he’d heard her moan his name or if he knew he’d starred in her erotic dream.
“So,” he said matter-of-factly, “do we want to stay in bed or get up and gather your things?”
“Get up,” she said promptly.
“Okay. Ladies first.”
She raised her eyebrow. “Not a chance, buster. As you well know, I’m only wearing this sheet and I’m not dropping it. I’ll see you downstairs.”
“Spoilsport.”
He gingerly swung one leg over the edge and rolled upright with a small grunt, reminding Leah of his injuries. “I assume you haven’t packed anything yet?”
She was embarrassed to answer. “No.”
“Then I’ll put on a pot of coffee.” With that, he limped from the room.
For a minute Leah simply lay there, realizing how her best-laid plan had gone awry. Gabe’s presence had already tainted her safe haven, much as the spirits of the two children she’d considered hers had tainted the house she and Gabe had built. There, she’d done her best to confine the atmosphere by locking the door to the nursery, but the gloom had invaded the rest of the house like a noxious fume and nothing she did could dispel it. The only way she could break free had been to move where she didn’t see memories everywhere she turned.
Now, thanks to not setting an alarm, to not returning before he’d realized she’d left, she wouldn’t ever banish the image of him in this specific bedroom and in this specific bed.
Damage control was in order, which meant she had to get him out of there as quickly as she could. She dashed to the bathroom and shimmied into a fresh pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt.
Next, she pulled her suitcases out of the closet and began tossing in clothes haphazardly. A quick sweep of the bathroom’s counter and medicine cabinet took care of her personal items and within minutes she was packed. Neatness, in this instance, didn’t count.
Downstairs, she set her cases by the door. Through the window, she caught a glimpse of Gabe’s SUV parked at the curb.
“Your vehicle’s outside,” she said inanely as she accepted the mug Gabe handed her.
“How else was I supposed to get here?” he asked.
“Sheldon didn’t give you a ride?” she asked.
“No.”
“You drove? Are you crazy?”
He snagged a butterscotch out of the candy bowl on the nearby end table and nonchalantly unwrapped it. “I may have been out of the country for a few weeks, but I still have my driver’s license.”
“This isn’t about the legality. It’s about your health,” she scolded. “You shouldn’t be behind the wheel with your bum leg and sore ribs. Your reflexes are compromised and what if you’re in an accident? You could be seriously injured, even killed! Not to mention the damage an air bag could do.”
“Those scenarios are possible,” he said, clearly unconcerned at the prospect, “but after surviving a plane crash, a car wreck seems mild in comparison.”
“For heaven’s sake, Gabe. You were lucky once, but you aren’t invincible.”
He folded the wrapper in half then in half again, as if he had nothing else to concern him, but she knew his casual air belied his sharp-eyed gaze and keen powers of observation. “You seem worried over something that didn’t and probably wouldn’t happen.”
She couldn’t believe he was asking her that question. “Why wouldn’t I worry when you do something foolish?”
He shrugged. “It’s nice to know you care.”
“Of course I care,” she snapped. “You’re my—” She stopped short, unable to supply the word he was obviously waiting to hear and feeling as if he’d led her down this path.
“Husband?” he supplied helpfully.
She raised her chin. “Yes. For now.”
“Then, as your husband, don’t you think I’d worry about you, too?”
“I already explained and apologized for not leaving a note,” she pointed out. “If I’d known I was so tired, I would have taken a nap when you suggested it.”
“But you thought you could get by without one.”
She nodded as she sipped her coffee, pleasantly surprised he’d remembered her preference for peppermint creamer and two packets of non-calorie sweetener. “That and….” She debated explaining the rest, but he wanted honesty, so she’d give it to him. “It just seemed as if once again you were telling me what to do.”
“I’m sorry you thought so because I was only offering a suggestion,” he said slowly. “It seemed kinder to suggest a nap than to mention the bags under your eyes or your haggard appearance.”
No doubt she had looked like death warmed over—a twenty-four-hour stint in the hospital tended to do that to a person. “You’re right, it was,” she admitted. “I was cranky and finding fault. I’ll try not to be so sensitive next time.”
“And I’ll keep Sheldon’s interruptions to a minimum.”
“Do you really think it’s possible?”
He grinned. “You bet, especially if I don’t answer the phone or the door.”
“So you’ll let the phone screen your calls and I get to weed out your visitors.”
“Precisely.”
“The next question is, will you be able to stay away from the office?” she asked, thinking of the hours he’d devoted to his foundation. Twelve-to sixteen-hour days hadn’t been uncommon during their last year together. “I know how difficult it is for you to relinquish the driver’s seat of your organization.”
“I can, and I will,” he said. “During our time in the jungle, Jack and I speculated on what might be happening here at home without me, and neither of us saw a pretty picture. My father wouldn’t have agreed with me, but it isn’t good for the entire workings of the foundation to hinge on one person. Until I implement more permanent changes, Sheldon is in charge. After I take hold of the reins again, I plan to delegate more.”
“I’m sure you’d like to implement your ideas, but I’m not convinced life will be any different than it was before.”
“I haven’t convinced you yet,” he corrected. “But I will. In fact, I’m willing to dissolve the trust fund and turn the foundation over to someone else if time becomes an issue.”
His news clearly caught her off guard because she stared at him with the same incredulity he’d seen on her face when the ambulance doors had opened. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“I can’t believe you’re offering to relinquish your family’s legacy. You’ve helped so many people—”
“I learned what’s important in life,” he said simply. “Yes, the foundation fills a need for a lot of people, but in the end my wife has to come first.”
“Why?” she blurted out. “I know you cut back on your hours when we thought we were starting our family, but our situation is different now.”
“Not really,” he mentioned. “We’re still a couple and I want to spend time with you.”
He made it sound as if their future was settled, but in her eyes it still wasn’t. And yet, if they were to have any hope of a future, they certainly had to do more than see each other in passing.
However, being around each other twenty-four seven meant that certain subjects were bound to come up. Certain subjects on which she’d already made her stand. Certain subjects that had brought them to the brink of a divorce…
She studied him through narrowed eyes. “And what happens if, by some miracle, we restore our relationship? What then? What’s next on your agenda?”
He frowned. “I don’t have an agenda, other than avoiding the divorce court.”
“It isn’t in the back of your mind to convince me to try the adoption route again? If that’s your end game, then we may as well visit my attorney now rather than later.”
“That isn’t my plan,” he insisted. “Whether we have children or not, we can still have a wonderful marriage. Just the two of us.”
He sounded sincere
and nothing in his eyes hinted at subterfuge, but she knew how badly he’d wanted children and she said so.
“Yes, I wanted to raise a couple of kids and still do if the opportunity arises,” he admitted, “but our relationship comes first. If that isn’t healthy, there’s nothing left.”
His quick response and his calm gaze caught her off guard. She hadn’t expected him to give up his heart’s desire so easily and it startled her to the point where she couldn’t find the words to reply.
“Is that why you’ve been digging in your heels about this divorce business?” he asked, clearly amazed. “You’re trying to save me from myself, aren’t you?”
“It isn’t fair to ask you to give up something you’ve desperately wanted and dreamed of,” she defended. “You’ll wake up one morning and realize you’ve wasted all those years and then we’ll be back in the same boat, sailing down the same river to nowhere. I can’t go through that again—”
“Will you let me be the judge of what I want?”
“Children are all you’ve ever talked about. As an only child, you wanted a houseful, you said.”
“I did, because I believe siblings teach life lessons that an only child doesn’t learn. Things like sharing everything from toys to parental attention and getting along with others, even when they irritate the heck out of us. But, Leah, we have to play the cards we’re dealt and if we don’t have children, then so be it.”
“Then why…?” She bit her lip in indecision.
“Why what?”
“Why did you push so hard for us to adopt right after we lost Andrew? You’d lost your chance to be a father and you grabbed at the first opportunity that came along.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked, incredulous. “That I rushed into the adoption only because I wanted to be a father?”
“Didn’t you?”
“No,” he exploded. “Absolutely, not! I did it for you.”
“How was your decision for me, Gabe? I was still grieving for my baby and any future children, and the next thing I knew we’re trying to complete home studies and prepare for another baby.”
He raked his hair with his fingers. “Hindsight says we should have waited, but at the time the opportunity seemed heaven sent. It would have been, too, but no one anticipated Whitney changing her mind in the final hour.”
Leah let out a sigh. No, no one had known or even guessed the outcome would turn out completely different than everyone had planned. Whitney Ellis, the birth mother, had been so sure of her decision—until the time came for her to live with it.
“I had to do something, Leah, because I was losing you. You wouldn’t talk. You wouldn’t tell me how you felt. Later, after we began discussing adoption and you met Whitney, you came around. You were happy again.”
After she’d recovered from her initial surprise and the situation had felt real and not just a dream, she had been. Deliriously happy.
“Then,” he continued, “as soon as she decided to keep her baby, everything fell apart again. And then, before I knew it, you were moving out.”
Gabe had struggled with so many conflicting emotions during those long months, but the day she’d packed her bags had been the bleakest day of his life. The day she’d asked for a divorce hadn’t been a high point of his thirty-eight years, either. However, this was the first time he realized she had attributed selfish motives to him.
Then again, how could he have guessed? They’d never expressed themselves this openly before.
He should have pushed her harder to unburden herself in the weeks and months after their adoption had fallen through. He’d waited for her to broach the subject, thinking she’d talk when she was ready, but she never had. On the other hand, he’d wanted to talk, to pour out his disappointment and his pain, but he hadn’t known how or where to begin. Consequently, they’d never discussed what had obviously lain so heavily on their hearts until eventually they’d found solace in other ways. He’d taken refuge in his work and she’d accepted a relief position at the hospital.
In the end, they’d drifted apart. Now he was trying to steer them back together, unable to believe he might be too late.
“Regardless of what you were trying to do, I don’t want to live through the same experience,” she said in a flat tone. “Putting our lives on display to birth parents in the hope they’ll choose us, being interviewed and trying not to sound over-eager, not to mention the waiting, the interminable waiting. Then, after all that, our hopes and plans can fall through at a moment’s notice.”
“I understand how you feel.”
“Do you, Gabe?”
“I went through the same disappointments you did,” he pointed out. “It wasn’t easy for me, either.”
She frowned and cocked her head to study him. “You didn’t act upset.”
“I was. I wouldn’t let myself show it because I felt like I had to be strong for you.”
“I see.” She paused. “Now that you know how I feel, if we reconcile—and that’s a big if—would you be satisfied with my decision?”
“Absolutely,” he said firmly, “As long as you don’t let fear influence your choice. But whatever we do, whichever route we take, we have to move forward. Doing what we’ve done before—avoiding the issue, locking off a room of our house—didn’t work then and it won’t work now.
“That said,” he continued, “at this particular point in time we have to concentrate on us. When we’re on track again, the rest of our concerns about families and homes and jobs will fall into place.”
Her expression suggested that she was skeptical, but if she truly thought he’d only been trying to fill his emotional needs, then he simply had to prove to her how wrong she’d been. Their future wouldn’t be secure until she trusted him to mean what he’d just said.
“You can say those other things don’t matter, but they’ve influenced our marriage.”
“Then we’ll deal with those things as they come up. What do you say, Leah? I know you aren’t a quitter.”
She sighed. “I don’t have a choice. I have to play your game.”
Obviously, she still felt as if she was being blackmailed—that she simply had to endure all this unpleasantness so she could get what she wanted. And yet, after lying beside her on the bed, hearing her whisper his name in her sleep, he suspected she still harbored feelings for him. He simply needed to tap into those.
“Yes,” he said bluntly. “For the next six weeks, anyway.”
She nodded, plainly resigned to their agreement.
Then, because he didn’t know what else to say, he gestured around the room. “How much of this shall we take with us?”
“Just the afghan and my knitting bag.” She pointed to a corner where yarn spilled out of a canvas tote. “If I need anything else, I can always get it later. Meanwhile, the refrigerator comes next.”
He followed her into the kitchen, noticing Leah’s touch wherever he looked. Silk sunflowers and wheat stalks sprouted out of several slender vases and lined the top of the kitchen cabinets. The ceramic bowl they’d bought at a flea market held fruit in the middle of the table. Her purse lay on the counter, her billfold and keys spilling out of the open flap. And several pairs of shoes stood in a neat row by the back door.
This was how a house should be, he thought. It should look lived in, not sterile and lifeless, like his. In a few short hours their house would look like he remembered, filled with color and flowers and the organized clutter that had always seemed to follow Leah. He could hardly wait.
“What made you decide to move into your parents’ house?” he asked. “I thought they were going to sell it when they moved to Oklahoma to be near your sister.”
To spoil their grandchildren, Tricia Jordan, Leah’s mother, had told him. Although Leah hadn’t seemed to begrudge them their decision, it had to be difficult for her to know that her sister was as fertile as a bunny while Leah’s branch of the family tree had withered.
“They’d intended to,” she ad
mitted, “but the Realtor suggested they’d get a much better price if they updated it. So, when I wanted a place of my own, I moved in with the understanding I’d redecorate and modernize.”
He glanced around the room. “You did a wonderful job. You always did have a good eye for detail.”
“Thanks.”
“Can you show me the rest?”
He saw her hesitation—as if she didn’t want to share this with him—before she finally shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
Gabe followed her through the dining room, back to the living room, then upstairs to the three bedrooms and a bathroom. The walls had all been freshly painted in neutral colors and airy curtains covered the windows.
“Quite an ambitious undertaking to work on by yourself,” he remarked as they returned to the kitchen.
“I didn’t mind. I needed to keep busy.”
“I suppose.” He noticed a collage of photos on the refrigerator and strolled over for a closer look. The pictures were all scenes he remembered, but one in particular stood out.
“I’d forgotten all about this,” he said offhandedly as he pointed to the snapshot of the two of them at a summer carnival, posing in front of the duck-shoot booth. “I spent a small fortune trying to win this giraffe.”
She came close to peer around his shoulder and smiled. “You were determined to win that prize. I think it cost you more than the animal was worth, though.”
“Yeah, but we wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun.”
“Probably not,” she agreed. “You were bound and determined to hit the grand prize duck.”
The concept had been simple—to shoot the toy ducks floating past with a suction-cup dart gun. Knocking over specially marked ducks earned special prizes and he’d decided early on which one he’d wanted.
He grinned. “It took me, what—an hour? As I recall, you named it Gemma. Because of the purple jewel around her neck.”
The jewel was actually a piece of colored plastic, but it was pretty and sure to catch a baby’s eye, which was why Leah had insisted the giraffe would be the perfect addition to their nursery. Now the toy stood behind a closed door, gathering dust instead of occupying a child’s attention.
Six-Week Marriage Miracle Page 9
