by Kay Hooper
Her eyes skittered away, then returned to his face. “That wasn’t exactly true. I thought it was. The—the last time I went to see you, I even said good-bye to you, out loud. I knew I wasn’t coming back. And I was very calm then. I must have driven about a hundred miles before I had to stop the car because I couldn’t see the road.”
Mitch started to draw her toward him, his hand slipping to the nape of her neck, but stopped when she shook her head slightly in a tiny protest. Her eyes were still fixed on his face. In the same soft, hesitant voice, she went on.
“I thought it was over. Then, a few months later, I met Brad. You asked if I loved him. That was one of the reasons I felt guilty, because I couldn’t. I could never say it to him, even later when I’d say anything else he wanted to hear. I’d told him about you, and once—once when he was angry he said that there was a ghost in his bed. That I couldn’t love him the way I should have because of you. And I realized I hadn’t said good-bye to you at all, I’d just walked away.”
He drew a short breath, then said, “Why did you lie to me?”
Kelly’s shoulders lifted slightly and then relaxed. “What else could I have said? Mitch, I knew the girl you had loved was gone. And I’d learned that I couldn’t take being possessed. Everything had changed.”
“And now?” he asked quietly.
She gave that confused little shrug again. “Now? I don’t know. It seemed so simple yesterday. You needed an ending and I did too. I thought we only had to spend a little time together to find that ending. But you’d changed in ways I hadn’t expected. You aren’t the man I remember, the man I couldn’t let go of, and yet I feel a—a connection to you.”
“I know.”
“How can you?”
“Because I feel it too.” Holding her diffident gaze with his own, he said slowly, “And it’s more than it ever was ten years ago, Kelly. It’s strong, and painful, and complicated, and it scares the hell out of me.”
“It does?”
He sighed roughly. “Of course it does. We’re both totally different people, almost strangers, but not quite. Ten years ago you were Kelly. Just Kelly. God forgive me, I didn’t think about you. I felt about you, but I didn’t think. And when I looked at you, I saw copper hair and violet eyes and a smile. Nice and simple.”
“But now it isn’t.”
Mitch laughed, a low sound. “No. No, now it isn’t. I think about you all the time. Copper hair and violet eyes. But now the eyes are shadowed and the hair’s more golden than I remember. I see strength and hurt and intelligence. I see a woman instead of a girl. But not a stranger. My mind tells me it’ll take years to know you the way I need to, but my heart knows you now. And the one thing I’m certain of most of all is that I can’t hold on to you. As badly as I want to, I know I’ll lose you for good if I do.”
Kelly looked at him, so close, so different from the man he had been. She had stopped deceiving herself into believing that she wanted an ending between them, but she was afraid of being that vulnerable again. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that Mitch would never hurt her physically, but there were so many other ways of being hurt, intentionally or not. And no guarantees. He might not be able to conquer his own possessive nature; she might well discover that her own ability to love completely had been destroyed by Brad’s cruelty; they could find there was just too much between them, too many memories, too many changes.
She started to move from his lap, but his arms tightened gently around her.
“Kelly, I know you’re scared. I know neither of us is the person we were ten years ago. But the changes have made us both stronger, and there are ties between us that haven’t been broken. We both feel that.”
She half nodded. “I know. I’m just not sure what it means. I don’t know what I feel. And I’ve made so many mistakes. I don’t think I could bear to make another one.” This time he released her so that she could stand.
Mitch sat looking up at her, forcing himself to remain still because he could sense her need for distance. “I think it’s worth the risk,” he said quietly. “I don’t believe we could ever be a mistake, Kelly. But I want you to understand something. Whatever we find together can’t be built on guilt. You have to come to me because you want to—not because you feel you owe me.”
She hesitated, then said, “Yesterday you said that I did owe you.”
“I’m sorry for that,” he responded instantly. His firm lips twisted slightly. “I didn’t want you to throw me out without giving us a chance, but I should never have said that. The only thing we owe to each other is honesty. I left you without being given a choice; you walked away from me because nobody could give you any hope at all that I’d come out of the coma.”
“And you don’t blame me for that?” She had taken a couple of steps away, toward the fireplace, and didn’t look at him as she asked the difficult question.
Mitch hesitated, but his own determination that they be honest with each other compelled him to be truthful about it. “Blame isn’t the right word. There’s a part of me—an unthinking, unreasoning part—that feels bitter. Maybe even betrayed. But it’s fading away, I promise you.”
“What if it doesn’t?” She looked at him through eyes that felt hot and painfully dry. “What if you can never completely forgive me for not waiting?”
He rose to his feet, but didn’t attempt to get closer to her. Very slowly, he said, “Kelly, if you had waited, if I’d awakened to find you beside my bed, I think we would have lost something very special, something we’re only now finding.”
“Why?”
“Because in most ways you’d still be that girl I loved but never really thought about. Waiting for anything is a kind of limbo; you wouldn’t have changed very much if you had waited all those years for me. You’re different today not because of Keith’s death or your parents’ but because you learned a very hard lesson about being alone. And the first step in learning what you had to was walking away from me. If you hadn’t learned that lesson, if I’d awakened to find you there waiting, I would have held on even tighter to a woman I’d never tried to understand. And I think you would have been lost to me.”
Kelly understood what he meant. They would have been tied together by the past, yet neither would have been forced to find the self-awareness required to see each other as distinct and separate individuals. Like two strangers holding hands in the darkness, their tie would have been one of fear and loneliness. Better to be together than alone.
She met his steady gaze and swallowed hard. “I have to hear it, Mitch. I have to know you mean it.”
He nodded, a muscle flexing in his hard jaw. “And you have to believe that even the unreasoning part of me means it, don’t you?”
“Yes. Maybe it isn’t rational, but I can’t let go of the guilt until I know you forgive me.”
“All right.” His smile was a little strained. “I’ll work on it.”
Reprieve. The word rose in Kelly’s mind. Once again they had only briefly obeyed the pull drawing them together, coming near enough to each other to confront one of the barriers between them. Near enough, this time, to touch fleetingly. Then, cautiously, easing back again to a safe distance, gazing warily at each other across the space between them.
She resisted an impulse to give in completely to the constant tug toward Mitch, just to allow herself to rush across the space and be in his arms. Even though it was where she wanted to be, every instinct told her that if she gave in too easily and without thought, she’d never learn to understand and value what she could have with him. And without understanding and respect, even love could turn into a trap all too easily.
Love? Love…
She drew a deep breath and flexed her shoulders in an attempt to ease the sudden tension. No, she realized, not sudden; it was just that the pull toward him had intensified so sharply, it felt like an entirely new thing. She hadn’t dared define her own feelings until now, and giving them a name had weakened her resistance to him.
“I think I’d better go back to work for a while,” she said carefully.
Mitch seemed to hesitate, then said, “Out on the beach, you were upset. Do you think your—do you think he’s found you here? Is that what was bothering you?”
He found it very difficult to name Brad as her ex-husband, she realized. She wondered if he’d ever be able to accept the fact that she had married another man. The old Mitch wouldn’t have been able to, she knew.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “He had a private detective following me at one time; I thought I’d lost him before Tucson. But maybe I never did. Brad could be around here somewhere. He could be back in Texas. Just be careful, all right? He’s dangerous.”
Mitch nodded slowly, watching her.
She started toward the door, feeling as if the dying storm outside had battered her mercilessly.
“Kelly?”
Pausing at the door, she looked back at him. He was grave, his lean face still.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said softly.
Whatever slim resistance she had left almost deserted her then. Whether it would have been best if the accident had never happened, or if she had waited, or even if their best chance for happiness was right now, the fact remained that they would have been married ten years ago today.
Unable to say a word, Kelly simply nodded and hurried from the room. She went to her study and closed the door firmly behind her, leaning back against it for a moment. Then she walked to her desk and sat down, staring blindly at the neat stacks of files and charts and graphs.
She loved Mitch. For the second time in her life, she had fallen in love with him. Or maybe she had never stopped in the first place; maybe that emotion had grown and changed silently inside her all these years. It had changed, she knew that. This wasn’t the unshadowed adoration of a child, it was the painful, uncertain love of a woman. This time she was afraid of love. Could she love him the way a man needed to be loved? Could she give so much of herself without becoming lost?
And what about Mitch? Even assuming he could truly forgive her for not having waited, for marrying another man, could he love the woman she was now? Could he conquer his own possessiveness, trust her enough to give her the space she needed? And once they were lovers…
Lovers. Kelly shivered, wondering if Mitch had guessed the part of it she’d been unable to say. Sex hadn’t been something she had enjoyed with Brad. Quite the contrary, in fact. He hadn’t been brutal—except in the weeks just before she’d left—but always he’d been impatient and rough. The first time had been terrible, the last time even worse. More than once, he had used sex as a punishment because he’d known how she hated it, and though she understood that his way had been twisted and sick, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had left her physically and emotionally unable to enjoy it.
She knew that what she felt for Mitch was made up of desire as well as love, but she was still afraid that if he made love to her, she’d be unable to respond. She might feel what she had with Brad: the smothered helplessness of being pinned by a male body and used.
Brad had seen it on her face, had felt it in her tense body no matter how hard she’d tried to hide it; that had been one of the sparks igniting his rages. She wasn’t sure even now if he had been hurt by it or if his tremendous ego had simply demanded that every woman consider him a wonderful lover. Whichever it had been, he had blamed her for her failure to find pleasure in his bed. Her and the ghost of Mitch he had seen between them. And his anger had found expression in taunts and cold humiliations and painful demands.
It had been years, but she hadn’t forgotten.
What if those memories proved to be yet another barrier between her and Mitch?
After a long time, Kelly made herself lift the first of the files from the neat stack in front of her on the desk. She’d had a lot of practice in blanking her mind, and she called on that now. With careful focus she concentrated on the work.
—
Mitch remained in the den for a long time after Kelly had gone, looking at nothing. Finally, he got the tray from the coffee table and carried it into the kitchen. He efficiently cleared away the remains of their lunch, his brooding glance straying often to the wall phone hanging near the pantry. There were two separate phone lines into the house: one ending in the study and the other in the kitchen; the kitchen phone had an extension in the entrance hall.
It took Mitch only a few minutes to make up his mind. He went to the phone and punched a number that was very familiar since he’d called it often in the past year. This time, however, the only response was an answering machine with a terse request to leave a name and number. Mitch hung up without leaving a message, and stood thinking for a moment.
His second call, this one to a hotel in Portland, met with more success. He asked for Evan Boyd, and was immediately given a mobile phone number where he could be reached.
Mitch wasn’t very surprised to find that Boyd was still in the area. He called the mobile phone, and when the investigator answered, said only, “Mitchell. Where are you?”
There was a brief pause, and then Boyd replied somewhat defensively, “Just down the road. I know you gave me my walking papers, but—”
“Something was bothering you?”
“Yeah. Something.”
Hearing the constraint in the other man’s voice, Mitch sighed and said, “All right. I admit I didn’t want to hear that Kelly was running from someone. But you were right.”
“Her ex?” Boyd asked cautiously.
“The bastard’s threatened to kill her. Have you been watching the house?”
“Off and on. I haven’t seen a sign of anyone else, but I’ve been around mostly during the day.”
Mitch wondered briefly if Kelly would like this, but the question didn’t alter his determination. He could no more ignore a threat against her than he could willfully prevent the next beat of his heart. Slowly, he said, “Can you find out if he’s where he’s supposed to be…in Texas?”
Boyd cleared his throat. “Already done. I called his travel agency in Marshall and talked to his secretary. He’s supposedly been on vacation, out of the country. But my gut says he’s a hell of a lot closer than that.”
Mitch almost smiled—at the informant rather than the information. “All right, then. Since you’ve obviously been working for me all along, forget the walking papers. I want that bastard out of Kelly’s life for good. What are our options?”
“We don’t have many, until he makes a move. I know a few cops out here, but whether they’ll be able to do anything is something I can’t say until I talk to them.”
“Do that right away. And make them understand it’s serious. Kelly doesn’t scare easily, and she’s sure he really means to kill her. From what she’s told me, I think he’s capable of it. He’s hurt her before.” It was difficult for Mitch even to get the words out, and his tone harshened when he managed it.
In a flattened voice Boyd said, “I wondered. Couldn’t find a sane motive for him to have gone after her. Look, do I have your approval to hire a couple more men to watch the house? We’ll concentrate on a perimeter defense—the road and the beach—and stay well back from the house. I can promise you that the men I pick will be invisible.”
“Hire as many as you think necessary.”
“Okay. I should have them on the job by tonight. And I’ll talk to the cops.”
They spoke only a few moments longer, setting a time for Mitch to call the following day to check on the progress that had been made. Then the call ended, and Mitch stood looking around the kitchen without really seeing it.
Brad. Almost as much as ending the threat to Kelly, Mitch wanted to get his hands on that bastard. It wouldn’t take long, he thought with the detachment that came from a soul-deep, icy rage. Not long at all. Just long enough to teach him what real fear was. Just long enough to break every bone in his body.
—
The next two days passed quietly. Mitch had said that wa
iting for anything was a kind of limbo, and Kelly felt he was right. It was as if they were both waiting for something definitive. Between them was a careful stillness, like the quiet before a storm. They talked during meals, but nothing important was said. She buried herself in her work for long hours at a stretch, and except for making certain she ate, Mitch didn’t try to interfere with her schedule.
The cleaning service came to do the house, and gardeners came to spend a day working on the grounds, and Kelly had another dream with a chilling ending.
It was the second night after she’d told Mitch about her marriage. She woke near dawn, a scream trapped in her throat. She was sitting up in bed, shaking, the terrifying images of the dream vivid in her mind. This time she’d found Mitch in the lower garden, and everything had been fine at first. But then he had kissed her, his touch tender, and she had felt only coldness and dread. His puzzled hurt had turned with nightmare swiftness to anger, to a driven determination to make her feel something else. His face changed so horribly that she had become afraid of him. He had pulled her down into a tangle of ivy, his bitter voice like knives.
“Now his ghost is between us, damn you!”
She had watched his savage face over her, blotting out the light—and woke with that scream in her throat.
It was hours until dawn, but Kelly wasn’t ready to go back to sleep. She slid from the bed and, without bothering to turn on a light, went to her door and opened it silently. As soon as she stepped out into the hall, she saw the faint glow of a light underneath Mitch’s door. Was he still up? For the first time, she wondered if he had trouble sleeping now. She thought that if she had awakened to find nine years of her life gone, sleep would be something to fear, something she would need to hold at bay.
It wasn’t enough that fate had stolen time from him, but to further deny him the necessary peace of sleep and dreams…just the thought of it filled her with pain for him.
