“Mrs. Vasquez should be gone soon. We could go downstairs and see what she left us for dinner.”
“I’m not hungry yet.” She shifted, sliding her body on top of his. “Not for food anyway.”
Remarkably, his response to her was as strong as the first time. He turned, reversing their positions, running lips and tongue over every sensitive inch of her body until she climaxed again. He could love her this way—strum her body to completion, tie her with chains of passion. It might be a pale substitute for real love, but it was the best he could do.
She couldn’t, wouldn’t leave him. She had to stay. Because he couldn’t live without her.
By mid-March, when the baby’s movements became certain, each flutter eagerly anticipated and enjoyed, Allie thought she’d finally accepted the limitations of her marriage. She’d told herself again and again Lucas’s respect and caring were enough, that those feelings were powerful enough in their own right to be equivalent to love.
Her father had recovered from the pneumonia and although still frail, was reasonably healthy. Lucas now accompanied her regularly to the care home, joining her and her sister’s and brother’s families. His presence shored her up during the difficult visits, when her father didn’t know her, when he lashed out at her angrily as if she were a stranger.
In the past, when she’d dealt with the heartbreak alone, when even her family’s presence couldn’t soothe the ache of slowly losing her father, she’d spent the drive home in tears. But having Lucas at her side changed everything, made the pain bearable. Now she rode home afterward with her hand in his, the contact giving her strength.
Surely that meant as much as his love. And she should be happy with what Lucas could give her rather than pine for what he could not. Or at least she told herself time and again, convincing herself she believed it.
She gave herself that silent lecture again as she sat before the vanity mirror in the bathroom she now shared with Lucas. Light filtering through the skylight above her softly dappled her skin with the pattern of the overhanging oak branches. Craning her neck up to look through the skylight, she saw the pale green of new leaves bursting into life.
The arrival of spring should lift her spirits, but a tightness seemed to have lodged inside her that she just couldn’t shake. As ashamed as she felt at her inability to fully appreciate the blessings she did have, she returned over and over to the sense of loss at what she didn’t possess. She felt like a fraud every time she looked into Lucas’s eyes and told him she loved him. Because although she did indeed, although she prayed each day he would open his heart to her, she herself had begun to close up a part of herself inside.
Allie sighed as she finished applying her makeup. After telling Lucas the truth about her father, she thought she’d put aside all her secrets. But now one burned inside, threatening to fester. As much as she might want it to be so, she was discovering it wasn’t enough to simply love him without hope of reciprocation. Greedy as she was, she wanted it all.
Caught up as she was in her musing, she didn’t hear him enter the bathroom. When he suddenly appeared behind her, his image in the mirror startled her. She gasped, guilt coloring her face.
“Hello,” she said to his reflection. She picked up her lipstick with a shaky hand. “Give me one more minute and I’ll be ready.”
“No hurry. Party doesn’t start for another twenty minutes.” He bent to hook his arms loosely around her, his hands resting against her swollen belly. “How’s he doing?”
“She’s fine.” Finished with the lipstick, she tucked it into her handbag. “Active today.”
He waited, his expression intense in the mirror. When a flutter rippled across her belly, his eyes widened in reaction. “Was that it? Was that him?”
“It was her,” she said, laughing. She shifted in her chair, rising to put her arms around him. Gazing up at him, she murmured, “I love you, Lucas.”
His eyes shone as he smiled down at her. “Thank you,” he said softly. “For loving me.”
The little knot inside her squeezed tighter. Angry at herself, she dropped her gaze, slipped away from him. “We should go.”
He grabbed for her hand before she could escape. “We can be late.” Pulling her toward him, he kissed the corner of her mouth, her cheek, trailing his lips to her ear. “Come to bed with me,” he whispered.
Even as temptation tugged at her to do exactly that, to enjoy the purity of their physical connection, the shut-down part of herself said no. “My sister will have a fit if I’m late for her birthday party.”
Sherril wouldn’t, but Allie swept that thought aside as they headed out to the car. On the way to Cocina Caldera, where the families were meeting for the party, she and Lucas discussed company business—the snail’s pace of repairs at the Modesto plant, the search for someone to replace her during her maternity leave.
As they pulled into Cocina Caldera’s parking lot, Lucas reached across the front seat to take her hand. “I promise, no more work talk. It’s a weekend, it’s your sister’s party. I plan to devote the rest of the afternoon and evening to you.”
He brushed his lips against the back of her hand, then let her go. Inside the restaurant, the lunch crowd had already left and it was early yet for the dinner group. Teresa greeted them effusively, escorting them through the nearly empty restaurant to the room in back reserved for the party.
Sherril, Stephen and their families were already there. To Allie’s surprise, Lucas’s friend, John, was there, as well, at one end of the long table.
As Inez set out baskets of chips and bowls of salsa, her gaze often strayed to John and each time sparks flew between them.
Allie turned to Lucas. “How long has that been going on?”
Lucas smiled. “A week or so. John finally got up the nerve to ask her out.”
Inez passed by John on the way to the kitchen, lingering to whisper in his ear and brush a kiss on his cheek.
Allie laughed. “Doesn’t look like she needed much persuading.”
Sherril approached and patted Allie’s tummy. “How’s my niece doing?”
They spent the next half hour chatting about pregnancy and babies, Stephen’s wife Anne joining in the conversation. Then dinner arrived, an array of special dishes Teresa had concocted just for Sherril. After the hearty meal, Inez served cake and Sherril opened her gifts, exclaiming over each one while the restless children played tag around the table.
Afterward, when they were all too stuffed to move, the men and women gravitated to opposite ends of the table. Inez, eager to get off her feet, sat with Allie, Anne and Sherril, her fingers linked with John’s across the table.
At one point Lucas’s gaze locked with Allie’s, his hungry look enough to make her blush. Sherril, too sharp-eyed to miss the exchange, laughed as she gave Allie’s arm a gentle poke. “That man is absolutely besotted with you.”
Allie just smiled, her eyes downcast. Anne sighed as she looked across the room at her own husband. “I remember those days. Stephen told me he loved me a dozen times a day. Now I’m lucky to hear it once or twice a week.”
“But he still adores you,” Sherril said. “Like Pete—even when he doesn’t say the words aloud, I still see it in his eyes.”
As Anne agreed, Allie sought out Lucas again at the other end of the table. He met her gaze, smiling as his eyes roved her face. She saw the incipient passion, his desire. But was there love?
Knowing the answer, she looked away, afraid her disappointment would show in her face. She tried to focus on Sherril’s and Anne’s description of their progenies’ most recent antics, but the joy of the party had gone out of her. Now she just wanted to go home.
She gestured to Lucas, said her goodbyes to her family. Once in the Mercedes, tiredness weighted Allie down, although it was still early evening. Leaning back, she closed her eyes, for the moment wanting to shut out the world.
Flicking a glance over at Allie, seeing her shut eyes and the tired lines of her face, disquiet s
tirred within Lucas. As he started the engine and pulled away, he looked at her sidelong, willing her to open her eyes and smile at him. But she kept her eyes closed as they drove, her hands linked over their growing child.
He’d sensed something was brewing inside Allie for some time, despite the easy contentment into which their marriage had settled. He’d caught the sadness in her eyes, read the despair that sometimes stole into her face. Even as he held her close and tried to pretend everything was fine, he knew something lurked beneath the surface.
If he ignored his misgivings, thrust them aside as he had been doing, he could continue to believe in the solidity of their marriage. But he had only to look at Allie, see the loneliness, the sorrow she worked so hard to conceal, and he realized there was no profit in delaying the inevitable.
He swallowed against a dry throat, keeping his gaze fixed on the twilight falling around them. “Allie,” he rasped out, “what’s wrong?”
She opened her eyes, but didn’t look at him. Just as well; he was terrified he would read the secrets in her eyes. Clutching the Mercedes’ steering wheel like a lifeline, he could feel the tendons popping out in his hands in sharp relief.
The silence ticked away, tightening the anxiety in his gut. When she finally spoke, he could hardly hear the words. “Lucas, I’m so sorry.”
For a moment the air seemed wrenched from his lungs, then he said carefully, “For what, Allie?”
She drew in a hitching breath. “I thought it would be enough. But it isn’t.”
The answers screamed at him, adding to his terror. With the forced actions of an automaton, he moved his foot to the brake, slowing for the red light ahead. Then with a deliberate effort, he asked, “What’s not enough?” Although he knew.
“Loving you,” she said through tears, “without you loving me.” She struggled to take in another breath. “You don’t love me, do you?”
His heart slammed in his chest, loud as a klaxon. As he shifted his foot to the accelerator again, he wondered how he would ever be heard over the cacophony. “What do you want, Allie? Do you want me to say the words?”
“You would to please me, wouldn’t you? But you wouldn’t mean it. Wouldn’t feel it.”
Lie to her! Lie to her now! But as many times as he’d hidden the truth from her about his past, he could give her nothing less than honesty about this. “I want to, Allie. But no, I don’t know how.”
She sniffed, the sound of her heart breaking as audible as shattered glass. Everything inside Lucas had shut off except the mechanical—scan ahead for traffic, flip on the blinker to change lanes, ease the car over. Keeping the car in control suddenly seemed crucially important.
This is it, my final failure. He couldn’t love her, the most precious, most important part of his life, essential to his very being and he couldn’t give her the one small thing she begged for.
He had to ask the ultimate question, the one that dangled between them like a razor-sharp knife. “Are you going to leave me?”
He took his eyes off the road long enough to hear her answer, compelled to see her face as she replied. For an instant she met his gaze, agony and love in her eyes all at once. Then she glanced away and horror filled her face.
“Lucas, look out!”
He snapped his head back to the road, absorbing the nightmare in a heartbeat. The fast-approaching intersection. The pickup truck speeding along the cross street too fast to stop at the red light. The Mercedes rolling past the limit line as if in slow motion. The truck looming larger, closer to the car’s passenger side. The first explosion of sound as tons of steel collided.
And Allie’s scream, bursting inside him like a fatal bullet, tearing at the chambers of his heart. Screaming his name at the top of her lungs, her frightened keening a plea to help her, to save her. In the blackness that momentarily closed in, Allie’s voice mingled with a long-dead memory and he heard his mother calling his name, screaming for him.
She was trapped, she was burning, please God, he had to save her. Her voice went on and on, loud and terrifying, until it was choked by the thick black smoke that seared his lungs and filled his eyes. Ten years old again, he struggled to see through the oily blackness, fought to breathe as he crawled along the floor.
He caught her hand, pulled at her still body. She moaned as he dragged her over the floor, heaving every ounce of his slight body against her dead weight. Looking over his shoulder at the open door he’d thought he could do it, could save her. But then a ceiling joist broke from its mooring, painting his back with fire before striking his mother.
He couldn’t remember the rest, must have lost consciousness. But when he came to outside the apartment in the arms of a fireman, he could still hear his mother’s screams in his mind. They just went on and on in his head, his name shrilled over and over.
With a sudden jolt, the memories released him and he stared, stunned, at Allie in the car beside him. The pickup truck had shoved aside half the engine compartment of the Mercedes and flames licked greedily from under the hood. Allie struggled weakly with her door, her head cut and bleeding, her eyes bruised with fear.
She turned to him, reached for him. “I can’t get it open, can’t get the door open.”
He grabbed her, remembered the seat belt, fumbled to release the clasp. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you—”
A sharp crack sounded as the flames licked closer and Allie screamed again. For a moment, the past dug its claws into him again, and it was his mother’s hand he held. The impossibility of saving her swamped him, overwhelmed him. Then he shook free and gathered Allie into his arms.
Afraid she might be injured, that he might hurt her, he moved her as gently as he could. But the fire had ignited inside the cabin of the Mercedes, running along the plastic dash, melting the collapsed airbags with its voracious heat. Shoving open his partially sprung door, he lifted her from the car and staggered across the roadway to the sidewalk.
Even as the ambulance and fire truck pulled up, the fire reached the gas tank, setting off a massive explosion. Lucas held Allie close to him, rocking her as he caught sight of the driver of the truck moving on unsteady feet to the sidewalk. The man, swaying as if drunk, stared at the disaster he’d caused.
Lucas raised his head, shouted over the noise, “I need help! Someone help me here! She’s hurt!”
As the paramedics hurried over, Allie’s eyes drifted open. “I’m fine, Lucas. I was just scared. But you saved me.”
Tears burned his eyes as he held her close. “I love you, Allie. I love you. You can’t leave me.”
“I won’t. No, Lucas.” She reached out for him as the paramedics lifted her onto a gurney, clutched his hand. “I would never leave you, I just…” Her eyes widened, fixed on him. “Did you say you love me?”
He wouldn’t surrender her hand, even as the paramedics rolled her toward the ambulance. “I did. It’s not just words, Allie. It’s the truth.” Tears clogged his throat. “I love you.”
He leaned close, whispering in her ear. “I think my heart is finally open for you. I feel it now. I love you.”
Straightening, he saw her eyes brim with tears, her wide, jubilant smile declaring her joy. “I love you, Lucas.”
He clung to her hand as he climbed into the ambulance with her, drawing strength from her even as he lent her his own. He could tell her all of it, was more than willing to reveal all the secrets of his past. Because she’d healed those wounds with her sweetness and love.
As the ambulance pulled away, fear still assailed him for Allie, for the baby. As sensitive as ever, she saw it in his face, soothed him with the touch of her hand. “We’ll both be fine.”
And he knew in that moment, looking into her wide green eyes, she was right. Their child had had a hell of a ride, but their love had made their baby strong, had made him a survivor.
“I love you,” she whispered again, her gaze expectant.
His heart spoke the words silently even as he said them out loud. “I love you, A
llie Taylor. Forever.”
Epilogue
Allie sat in the shade of the covered deck, her newborn son nestled in her arms, while Lucas stood by the backyard swing watching their brand-new five-year-old daughter fly in ever increasing arcs. Her head thrown back in exuberant joy, Tiffany squealed to her father, “Higher, Daddy, higher!”
Lucas obliged, pushing the swing harder, grinning as his daughter sailed past him. Tiffany had come a long way since she’d arrived, sullen and silent, at their home four months ago. Her birth father dead, her natural mother lost to drugs, the tough-as-nails little girl had been a challenge from day one. Especially as baby Nathan lingered in Allie’s womb a week past his due date, stubbornly setting his own birth agenda.
But they’d seen a turnaround in the last month since they’d started adoption proceedings for Tiffany. Most of the credit went to Lucas, his insight into all the shadowy corridors of Tiffany’s heart giving him a wisdom Allie would never possess. Allie loved Tiffany and told her so every day. But Lucas added to his powerful love an understanding Tiffany had responded to instantly.
Month-old Nathan stirred in Allie’s arms, gave out an exploratory screech as he rooted for her breast. Feeling a little like the local dairy, Allie lifted her blouse with a sigh and helped Nathan latch on. As demanding as his father, Nathan seemed to glare at her as he sucked, a commentary on her slow response time. She could only laugh, a softness spreading inside her as she gazed down at those wide gray eyes.
The accident six months ago had proved to be a turning point in more ways than one. The shattering of Lucas’s barriers, his avowal of love for her had been miracle enough. But a day or two later, Lucas told her about Tiffany. He’d been discussing the little girl with John the night of Sherril’s birthday party. Once he knew for certain Allie and the baby had survived the accident unscathed, he began campaigning to add Tiffany to their family. Not that Allie had needed much convincing.
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