by Kay Hooper
“Something’s bothering you. What is it?”
Kelly managed a shrug. “It’s nothing. Gremlins of the mind. And none of my business.”
Mitch smiled. “Oh. Other women?”
She frowned at him in the mirror, trying to keep it light. “Was I that obvious?”
“It must have been this connection of ours,” Mitch murmured, still smiling.
“Teenagers are so complacent,” she offered, determined to sound offhand and merely thoughtful. “It just occurred to me recently that it never occurred to me then. I mean, there you were in your twenties, according to all the studies at the peak of your sexuality, and I was determined to be a virgin bride. Three years engaged, and I never even considered the possibility that you might have…”
“Stepped out on you?”
She laughed suddenly, honestly, if ruefully, amused. “It is ridiculous, isn’t it? To have expected you to wait three years so I could wear white without guilt.” A sudden memory made her add in a dry tone, “I should have known better. You and Keith were chasing girls all through your teens, and I know you caught quite a few of them. It used to make me feel miserable to see you with your arm around some busty blonde.” The arms currently around her tightened slightly, and in the mirror his expression looked curiously indecisive.
“I was a normal teenager,” he admitted lightly. “Hormones raging, bent on conquest. And there were a few girls in those days.”
“Of course there were,” she agreed in a brisk tone, forcing herself to ignore the painful stab of unreasoning jealousy she had no right to feel. “Like I said, anything else would have been ridiculous.”
“There were a few girls,” he repeated deliberately, the brief look of indecision gone from his expression, “before you, Kelly. Not after.”
She turned in his arms so that she could look up at his face rather than at his reflection. Her hands lifted to rest on his hard chest. “What?” She felt a little numb. Surely he didn’t mean…
Mitch kept his arms around her, but loosely now. Obviously trying to lessen the impact of what he was saying, he kept his voice light and rather thoughtful. “Half your life, but I can’t really say it was fourteen years, since I was unconscious for nine of them. And for the better part of this past year I didn’t have the strength or the inclination to chase nurses—no doubt because I was hardly in what you’d call prime physical condition, and because none of them was you. So we’ll say it was four and a half years, give or take a couple of months.”
Kelly swallowed hard. “You mean…even after you came out of the coma, you didn’t—?”
“Doctors,” Mitch said consideringly, “love to explain things in clinical terms. And my doctors, including the physical therapists, were careful to explain that there’d been no injuries that would prohibit my enjoying an active, healthy sex life. At the time I was too concerned with getting back on my feet to think about it very much.”
She stared at him.
With an expression that was both humorous and rather self-mockingly defensive, he said, “All right, I did think about it. You weren’t there, though, and I decided—well, I decided that was the problem. But the coma had stolen several other things, after all, and I couldn’t be sure. Still, I kept telling myself everything would be fine. The entire point of the therapy was to get all my muscles and nerves back in working order, so I could hardly expect…”
Kelly had a good idea of why Mitch was being humorous and mocking about this, and it wasn’t only to cover what must certainly have been a very real anxiety. She was so moved she could hardly bear it, and yet at the same time she was conscious of a giggle trapped in the back of her throat. It was the way he was explaining this to her, with that disarming charm of his she remembered so well, his lean face so expressively droll. As if the whole thing, at least with the benefit of hindsight, were absolutely ludicrous.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hug him, hit him, or shake him.
“Everybody kept telling me I was doing fine,” he went on in a thoughtful tone. “Just remarkable, they said. No problems and nothing at all for me to worry about. And I didn’t really have the nerve to say, hey, Doc, I think the family jewels are lagging behind.”
Kelly bit her bottom lip, and carefully cleared her throat. She wasn’t going to laugh. She wasn’t. “I—I see. And—when you got out of the hospital?”
“I fixed all my attention on finding you. I didn’t want anyone else, so I figured that was the problem anyway. When I first got here, the emotions were so thick, they sort of got in the way of a physical response. But, then, the next morning…the possibility was definitely there.”
She suddenly remembered that morning, and his intense scrutiny of her. She’d felt his desire then, so sharp and powerful it had badly unnerved her. “Oh,” she murmured.
Mitch eyed her severely. “Oh? Is that all you have to say? Talk about waking the dead.”
Kelly choked, and balled up one fist to punch him somewhat weakly on the chest. “Stop making me laugh! You aren’t fooling me into believing it wasn’t serious to you.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t realize that. You know what they say about fragile male egos?”
“I’ve heard a few things.”
“They’re all true,” he said sheepishly.
This time she managed not to laugh. And, since she knew the other reason he had guided her along the deliberately humorous path of his worries about the “family jewels,” she forced herself to face the central fact about which he had so carefully been offhanded.
“But not really the point, I think,” she said steadily. “The point is that you waited for me. And I didn’t wait for you.”
Chapter 7
“Dammit, this is just what I didn’t want to happen.” All signs of self-mocking humor were gone; Mitch’s face was entirely serious and even a little grim.
“I can’t avoid the truth,” she said.
“You’re painting the truth with guilt,” he told her flatly. “And there’s no reason. Kelly, stop and think about it for a minute. That arrogance of mine, remember? I could afford to be noble and wait while you grew up because there was never any doubt in my mind. We were going to spend the rest of our lives together, I knew that. So what if I was so horny I had to take long walks and cold showers? I didn’t want another woman, I wanted you. Hell, I congratulated myself on being so patient.”
“You did?” she asked involuntarily.
He laughed shortly. “Of course I did. Combine the sins of arrogance with a sense of one’s own superiority, and that was me. I was the so-called adult, remember, waiting for my child bride to become a woman. And I was so damned sure of myself, it took a kick from fate to knock me on my backside.”
With the wind taken out of her sails, Kelly stared up at him. “So you’re saying you waited for me with the worst of motives, and I left you with the best of them?”
Some of the grimness faded from his face, and Mitch smiled. “Does sound a bit cut and dried, but that’s basically it. I loved you, Kelly, and the waiting was easier because of that. But the truth—the bare truth not painted with guilt or anything at all—is that I knew we’d have a future together, and you knew we wouldn’t.”
“But you’re here—”
His hands slid up to grasp her shoulders, and he shook her gently. “Stop saying that. It’s a fluke that I’m here, a whim of fate. One of the rare little jokes God probably uses to teach medical science they don’t know as much as they think they do. The point is that nobody thought I’d wake up. Nobody, sweetheart.”
Kelly accepted that for the moment. But she knew the question of her guilt was yet to be settled. Because no matter how convincing his arguments were, the fact was that Mitch was still unable to forgive her. Maybe that sense of betrayal he’d been so honest about was deeply buried, and maybe he could come to terms with it—but he hadn’t yet. And unless and until he did, she couldn’t completely forgive herself.
She pushed it aside for now. Sh
e wanted to be happy today, to delight in the closeness between them. Conjuring a smile, she said, “Well, you didn’t have to try to make me laugh over your worry that you were—”
He kissed her quickly. “Don’t say it. I wouldn’t even let myself say that word.”
“All right, I won’t say it. Besides, you’re fine now.”
Mitch eyed her. “Fine?”
She studied him with a mock frown. “Are we dealing with a fragile ego here?”
“I just thought that fine was sort of a lackluster word to use,” he explained in a pained tone.
Kelly bit her lip, then said, “I suppose from your point of view it might have been.”
“Naturally. If you’d said magnificent, now, or stupendous, I might have felt a bit more secure. But fine? Fine is what you are when you’ve gotten over a cold. Fine is not what you are after experiencing major emotional trauma.”
She rested her forehead against his chest and allowed the pent-up giggles to escape. It felt wonderful.
“Now she’s laughing at me,” Mitch said in a depressed tone with a thread of amusement woven through it. “The woman is running amok over my ego. If I had any arrogance left, it is writhing in the dust.”
“I’d forgotten you could be so funny,” she murmured into his shirt.
“Funny? Light of my life, years from now, when they speak of this, and they will, they’ll say—”
“They?”
“Quiet, I’m being lyrical.”
“Pardon me, I’m sure.”
“They’ll say…what will they say? Oh, yes. They’ll say, ‘She trod carelessly upon the dark insecurity of her man, laying bare with a single four-letter word that consuming fear every male hides deep in his ego. She said fine, and his very soul quivered under the blow.’ ”
Kelly lifted a solemn face from the front of his shirt. “Will they let me have a second chance?” she asked meekly.
“If you grovel.”
Reflectively, she said, “I’d rather just stand here proudly and correct this sad misapprehension you seem to be laboring under.”
Mitch linked his fingers together at the small of her back and looked magnanimous. “I’m listening.”
“Then I’ll say, in all truth, that these last hours—” She looked at her watch and remarked in mild surprise, “It’s almost noon. Did you know that?”
He gave her a little shake and growled.
Kelly cleared her throat hastily. “As I was saying, these last hours have been so utterly wonderful that mere words are hopelessly inadequate to describe them.”
Mitch waited a beat, then frowned at her.
“Well, they are.” She sobered abruptly and stood on tiptoe to curve her arms around his neck. “Even magnificent and stupendous fall short of the mark.”
He hugged her. “Hey, if you’re going to get serious, we’d better go downstairs and rustle up some food. Obviously, you’re in a weakened condition.”
She kissed his chin, knowing that he was fully aware of the pleasure she’d found in his arms. “Obviously.”
Mitch chuckled and held her hand firmly as they left the bedroom and started downstairs. “Are you going to insist on working today?”
Kelly felt a stab of guilt, and gave him a slightly worried look. “I really should, at least for a couple of hours. I need to call Mr. Fortune and check a few things with him.”
“I’m not going to kick and scream about it,” Mitch told her dryly. “But I do think you’ve been working too hard the last few days. To avoid me, I know.”
She smiled. “It showed, huh?”
“Around the edges. I probably learned a valuable lesson in patience.”
They had reached the kitchen by then, and as she went to look in the refrigerator she said lightly, “A useful virtue to cultivate. Should I be listening for the other shoe to drop?”
He had no difficulty in understanding the mild question. In the same tone she’d used, he said, “It’s obviously going to take time for you to believe it, but no. I can’t be the same man I used to be, Kelly. Even if I wanted to. If I try to hold on to you too tightly, it won’t be out of domination or arrogance—but out of fear.”
She turned to look at him, but he gestured slightly before she could speak.
“I know, that motive’s hardly a better one. But I can’t pretend it isn’t there. The fear of loss is something—something I may never overcome.” His matter-of-fact voice didn’t quite conceal the emotions beneath. “But it is something I’m aware of, something I can consciously control. Kelly, if I’ve learned anything through all this, it’s that you can’t build walls around the people you care about. You can’t do it to keep them near or to keep them safe. Even if they could stand the prison, that kind of control is still an illusion. To fate, the walls are made of air.”
Kelly crossed the space between them and slid her arms around his waist. “You are different,” she murmured against his chest as his arms closed about her. “Before, you never talked about your feelings. You just—well, seemed to think I should understand without being told.”
“I was a silly bastard,” he said calmly, and kissed the tip of her nose as she looked up at him. “But I’m all grown-up now, and quite delighted with the woman you are. So stop listening for that other shoe; I’ve thrown it out the window. You may catch me in an odd moment trying to get my own way, but I think we can both deal with that.”
She smiled. “I think so too.”
“Good.” He patted her bottom and then released her.
After lunch Kelly reluctantly went into her study to work. She admitted to herself that she would have preferred to spend the rest of the day with Mitch; after what had happened to them before, she was aware of a superstitious urge to remain as close to him as possible. But, just as he knew he couldn’t hold on too tightly to her because of fear of loss, she knew the same was true for her. Still, knowing it did little to make her feel better.
It was so easy to mock fate. At least, as Mitch had more colorfully stated, until it kicked you where you hurt. With so much beyond any individual’s control, it was almost terrifying to realize that control over even one’s own future was very much in doubt.
A fact, however, was a fact, and had to be accepted. Kelly knew that wasn’t the reason she had been unable to tell Mitch she loved him. It was because she wasn’t yet whole. There was still, at the core of herself, some wavering uncertainty she hadn’t been prepared to examine closely until now. She loved him, and she wanted them to be together. If he could forgive her for leaving him.
Was that it? She wasn’t sure. Maybe. Partly, at least. And partly because she was in a kind of limbo.
The thought stopped abruptly in her head, but Kelly made herself look at it squarely. She was in a kind of limbo, because Brad was still out there somewhere and a part of her was waiting for him to make a move. That, too, was something unfinished—and had to be handled.
She’d almost forgotten about him. Had forgotten about him for a while. Mitch had said very little about the possibility of her ex-husband showing up, but she knew it wasn’t something he was ignoring. He had believed her, had accepted her belief that Brad meant to kill her if he could. But it struck her for the first time that Mitch had been unnaturally quiet about that possibility. He had changed, yes, but the man he was today was a stronger, tougher man in many ways—and hardly likely to sit and twiddle his thumbs if even the possibility of danger lurked nearby.
After a long, thoughtful moment, Kelly turned on her computer and prepared to work. She had a question to ask him, but there was no hurry.
—
Mitch held the receiver to his ear and frowned unseeingly across the kitchen as he listened to Evan Boyd’s voice.
“Nothing was happening. I started getting the feeling that somebody was toying with us,” the investigator was saying. “So I got a friend of mine in Texas to do a bit more checking on that out-of-the-country trip West was supposed to be on.”
“And?” Mitch a
sked.
“It wasn’t easy. Since West is in the travel business, he knows all the tricks. As far as we could determine, he didn’t leave the country. But he didn’t come here either.”
“Where is he now?”
“That’s the kicker. My friend hasn’t actually seen him, but there have been at least two notices in the town’s newspaper during the past three days that put him at charity functions right there. Nowhere near California or here. So I called his office, and was told that he was in a meeting. It could be the standard secretary’s excuse, of course.”
Mitch was silent for a moment, then he said, “What does your gut say?”
Sighing, Boyd replied, “My gut isn’t saying a damned thing. Would the bastard be this devious?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he hasn’t tracked her this far yet. She told me that after moving to a new place it was usually weeks—even months—before he showed up. It could be that he doesn’t know she’s here.”
The investigator sighed again. “The two guys I hired think we’re both crazy, and they’re bored; they aren’t as good as I’d hoped. The cops told me to yell if something happened, but otherwise aren’t interested. Look—maybe he was here and realized we were waiting for him. He could have decided to back off until the odds were better.”
Flatly, Mitch said, “I won’t look over my shoulder for the rest of my life, and I don’t want Kelly to have to. If we can find out for certain where West is, I’ll have him watched, twenty-four hours a day if necessary, until I can find a way to get him out of our lives for good.”
“All right,” Boyd said. “Then I’ll fly down to Texas and eyeball him myself. I can probably get a flight sometime tomorrow. Do you want the other two to stay on watch?”
“How effective are they?” Mitch asked bluntly.
“Not very,” the investigator admitted. “If West drives up to the front door in a tank, they’d probably spot him. They’re good men—it’s just that they don’t feel a threat and that makes them slack.”
