by Marie Force
She didn’t move or even indicate she heard him.
“I can’t do a goddamned thing for you if you fall off that rock!” he yelled, still clutching his side as he tried to catch his breath. “So get down. Now!”
“Leave me alone, Ryan. Will you please just leave me alone?”
He hated the tears he saw on her cold-reddened cheeks—and hated knowing he had put them there.
“If you don’t come down, I’m coming up.”
“I got myself up, I can get myself down. Now, go away.”
He scaled the six-foot climb with his eyes, groaning inwardly at what it would cost him to climb up there in his current condition. Reaching for the first notch in the rock, he grabbed hold of it and grunted as he eased his way up the craggy slope.
“Oh, for God’s sakes,” she said, descending with ease. She wiped her hands on her jeans and glared at him. “Happy now?”
“No,” he said. “I am not happy right now.”
She tried to push past him, but he blocked the path.
“I need you to leave me alone for a little while.” Her bright blue eyes spit fire at him. “Can you do that? I can’t think when you’re taking up all the space.”
He fought to conceal his smile. “Out here?” He gestured to the snow-capped aspens and pines. “Or in there?” he asked, resting a finger on her chest.
She swatted his hand away. “Ugh! You’re driving me crazy!”
“Right back atcha, darlin’. You drive me crazy. You drive me wild. You drive me. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Well, I’ve been trying to tell you it’s time for you to get a new driver, but you refuse to listen to anything other than what you want to hear.”
“I don’t want another driver. I want you.”
“You can’t have me! What part of that do you not understand?”
“Um, the ‘can’t’ part?”
She shrieked with frustration. “You could have any woman in that town.” She gestured toward Breckenridge off in the distance. “Hell, you could have three of them at once if that’s what floats your boat. Why don’t you go find one who wants you and leave me alone?”
“Maybe I can have any woman I want.” He worked at not showing her she had hurt him by being so anxious for him to find someone else. “But the only one I want is the one who’s standing right in front of me.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you—”
“I know you’re hoping I’ll get bored with this and give up because that’s what I would’ve done in the past. But that’s not going to happen.”
“Let me ask you something, Ryan.”
“Anything you want.”
“What happens, hypothetically speaking, if you were to ‘get’ me?” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “What happens then?”
He shrugged. “We spend the rest of our lives together.”
“And when you’re not in the fight of your life, are you going to be this concerned about how I feel and what I’m thinking and if I’m happy?”
“Of course I will,” he stammered. “I will.”
She snorted. “Whatever. Once the thrill of the chase is gone, the thrill will be gone, too, and we’ll be right back to business as usual—you being the great and wonderful Ryan Sanderson and me being a piece of furniture in your life. You can’t convince me anything would be different.”
“Do you know what your problem is?” He told himself to just shut up before he said something he couldn’t take back. But somehow his mouth never got the message from his brain.
“Oh, please, do enlighten me.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“You’ve never forgiven me.”
“For?”
He kicked at the snow with the point of his boot. “You know.”
Her face went pale. “Don’t go there. That’s completely and totally off limits.” She pushed past him.
“Why?” He chased after her. “Why is it off limits? You’ve never talked to me about it. I know you’ve talked to other people about it. Why not me? Why not the only other person in the world who feels the same way you do?”
She stopped and turned to him, a look of disbelief on her face. “You do not feel the same way I do, and you’ve got a lot of nerve to say that!”
“Why?” he cried. “Because I wasn’t the one who carried him? That doesn’t mean I didn’t want him! I wanted him. More than I’ve ever wanted anything!”
Susannah put her hands over her ears and shook her head. “Please stop.”
He reached for her arm. “No, I won’t stop,” he said, plunging forward despite the hurt that made every nerve ending in his body feel like it was on fire. “This conversation is long overdue. It’s the reason we’re on the verge of a divorce.”
“It’s not the only reason.”
“It’s a big one, and nothing was ever the same after it. Talk to me, Susie,” he pleaded. “I needed to share it with you, but you shut me out.”
“You went back to work!” She tugged her arm free. “If you wanted to share it with me, you should’ve stayed home.”
Following her as she started back down the path, he said, “I had a job to do. My team was counting on me.”
“Your wife was counting on you,” she shot over her shoulder.
“My wife treated me like the whole thing was my fault. Going back to work was a relief.”
“How typical. Of course it was all about you.” Her movements were jerky as she went into the cabin and tugged off her coat.
He hung his coat next to hers and summoned the strength to pursue it, knowing if he didn’t, nothing else he did would matter. “It wasn’t all about me, Susie,” he said in a quiet tone as he fought for control of his emotions. “But it wasn’t all about you, either. I was in that room when they couldn’t find his heartbeat. I was right there with you. And then I had to watch my wife give birth to a baby we knew was dead.” His voice caught. “So don’t try to tell me it didn’t happen to me, too.” He walked up behind her and rested his hands on her stooped shoulders. “It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, Susie,” he whispered. “Even worse than losing my mother.”
Sobs wracked through her petite frame. “It was my fault.”
“What?” He turned her around so he could see her face. “Why would you say that?”
“I must’ve done something wrong. He was moving all around. For thirty-two weeks he lived inside me, and then he was just gone. How could that have happened?”
“No one knows, baby.” Tears slid down his face. “But it was not your fault. You did everything right. I wanted to help you. After. I wanted to be there for you, but you didn’t want me. That made me crazy, Susie. I felt like I had lost you, too. That’s why I went back to work. I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t bear to spend another day in that house waiting for you to turn to me. Your mother was there and your sister, so I knew you’d be well cared for. I just needed to go back to something I could control.”
“And how did that go?”
His mouth twisted into an ironic smile. “You know. The biggest blowout of my career.”
“Which led to all the press coverage of our loss. It was ours, Ryan. It never should’ve been in the papers.”
His jaw clenched with old anger. “I know that. I tried to find out who leaked it to the press, but I never did. I was on the warpath for weeks over it.”
She shrugged. “It could’ve been anyone—a nurse in the hospital, a trainer on the team. Who knows? It didn’t matter. Nothing did, for a long, long time.”
“I’ve thought of him every day for two years,” Ryan confessed. “I wonder what he’d be doing, what he’d be saying, what he’d be interested in. I have this picture in my mind of what he might look like—he’d have to be blond with us as his parents. I hope he’d have gotten your pretty blue eyes and maybe my dimples. Girls always went crazy over them.”
Susannah looked up with surprise, her eyes bright with new tears. “I ne
ver knew you thought about him that way.”
“You never let me tell you. I couldn’t stand having to pretend like nothing happened when the worst thing in the world had happened. After Bernie and I cleaned out the nursery before you came home, I bawled for hours. I was a total mess, but you refused to let me even mention his name.”
She shook her head. “Don’t.”
“Justin,” Ryan whispered. “His name was Justin, and he was our son, Susie. Ours.” He pulled her tight against him when she broke down into sobs. “I loved him as much as I love you, and I miss him. I miss him every day.” He brushed the tears from her face. “We should’ve tried again.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t bear the idea of it happening again.”
“The doctors said there was no reason to believe it would. It was a fluke thing, baby. And don’t you think we owe our son more than to let his death ruin our marriage? He wouldn’t have wanted that, Susie. We were so happy for so long, and then it was over. Just like that.”
“It wasn’t just because of what happened with...”
“Say it, Susie. Say his name.”
“Justin,” she whispered. “It wasn’t just because of him.”
He sat on the sofa and brought her down onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her. “It didn’t help that we weren’t able to share our loss, that we both turned to other people to get us through it.”
“No,” she conceded. “That didn’t help. I’m sorry if you felt like I blamed you. I didn’t. I just felt like I had failed you so profoundly.”
“Failed me?” He was incredulous. “You didn’t fail me. You could never fail me.”
“I knew how much you wanted a family of your own, and I wanted to give you that. I wanted to do that for you.”
“You already had. The day you agreed to marry me, I had my family. If I’d had only you, it would’ve been enough. Justin and any other children we might’ve had would’ve only been frosting on the cake.”
Susannah stared at him, seeming amazed by his confession.
“So what do you say?” he asked. “Do you think you can forgive me?”
“For what?”
“For going back to work when you needed me. For letting you think football was more important to me than you were, which it wasn’t—ever.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Never?”
He shook his head. “Never.”
Caressing his bruised cheek, she studied him for a long time. “I do forgive you, Ryan. I pushed you away after everything happened. You’re right about that. I knew I was doing it, and I knew I’d regret it.” She looked almost ashamed. “In a way, I think I was testing you.”
“I guess I failed then, miserably, by rejoining the team,” he said, feeling sick as he said it.
“You did what I expected you to.”
“I would’ve stayed. If you had given me even the slightest indication you wanted me there, I would’ve stayed. I would’ve sacrificed the rest of the season if I’d thought it would matter to you.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “We’ve made a terrible mess of things, haven’t we?”
“It’s nothing we can’t fix.”
“I’m marrying someone else,” she reminded him.
He tipped her chin up and brushed his lips over hers. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
Chuckling, he caught her bottom lip between his teeth. “You’ll marry him over my dead body.”
“If that’s what it takes,” she said with a saucy grin. Her eyes danced with amusement, which he much preferred to the devastation of a few minutes earlier.
He tossed his head back and laughed but went silent when he felt her lips on his neck. “Susie. . .” he groaned. “What’re you doing?”
“Remembering.”
“Remembering what?” he asked as she moved on to his ear, sending a ripple of desire shooting straight through him.
“How I used to be able to get you to do anything I wanted with just a few well-placed kisses.” She trailed her lips along his jaw.
“I believe what you’re doing right now was how you ended up with a Chippendale dining room to show off Grandma Sally’s china,” he said dryly, but his heart felt like it was going to jump out of his chest. He was in pain again but not from his injuries.
She giggled at his restrained grimace as he let her have her way with him.
“So what are you after now?” he asked with a grin, sliding his hands under her sweater to find the soft skin of her back. He had forgotten just how silky smooth she was. She felt like a dream he never wanted to wake up from.
She dropped gentle kisses on the battered side of his face. “I’m not sure.”
“Just so we’re on the same page, now would be a very good time to ask for anything you want.”
“How about a divorce?” she asked with a teasing smile.
Stung, he eased her off his lap and got up.
“Ryan...”
He kept his back to her. “I’m going to take a walk.”
She got up and went to him. Resting her hands on his chest, she said, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair in light of what I was doing—”
He stopped her with a finger to her lips. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“You wanted some time to yourself, and I could use a minute, too.”
“Ry?”
He turned to her on his way out the door.
“I really am sorry.”
With a curt nod, he closed the door behind him.
She realized after he left that he had forgotten his hat.
Chapter 9
He was gone a long time. Susannah made soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, but he didn’t come back, and she couldn’t eat until he did. During his absence, snow began to fall softly at first and then more steadily. As she put several logs on the fire, she worried he had fallen or reinjured his ribs or worse.
The afternoon had grown dark, and she was pacing in front of the fire by the time he finally came in, his hair white with snow and his face red from the cold. He carried a soggy newspaper.
Susannah flew across the room and leaped into his arms.
He hissed from the pain of impact but scooped her up anyway.
“I’m sorry. I was mean, and I hate myself for hurting you.”
“Be quiet, darlin’, and kiss me, will ya?”
His lips were cold and demanding, but the kiss was hot, so hot that Susannah melted into him, oblivious to the snow dripping all over both of them. He eased her back down without losing the kiss.
She pushed his coat off his shoulders, and it fell into a wet lump on the floor. Pulling back from him, she led him to the hearth in front of the fireplace and urged him down. “You’re so cold. Why did you stay out there for so long?”
“I went into town to get the paper.”
Her mouth fell open. “You walked four miles to get a paper? Are you out of your mind? You shouldn’t be doing that! You have a perfectly good car sitting out there.”
“I needed the exercise. All this lying around is turning me into a noodle.”
She pulled off his boots and rubbed his feet through his socks. “Are your ribs okay? Do they hurt?”
“They weren’t hurting until you launched yourself into them,” he said, but there was amusement, not reproach, in his tone. He toyed with her hair. “I like this concerned Susie. I’ll have to get you worried about me more often.”
“All I ever did was worry about you.”
He took her hands to stop her from rubbing his feet. “You’ve never told me that before.”
She shrugged. “You’re forever climbing something, scaling something, flying something, testing your limits. It’s bad enough you let three-hundred-pound men crash into you for a living.” She shuddered. “The other stuff was unbearable. I spent a lot of time waiting to hear you were paralyzed or dead.”
“Why didn’t you ask
me to stop?”
“Because that would be like asking you to stop breathing. It’s who you are. I couldn’t ask you to be someone you weren’t.”
“You’re very silly, do you know that?”
She huffed with indignation. “Why does that make me silly?”
“Because all you had to do was tell me it bothered you, and I would’ve stopped.” He kissed her hands. “The team hates my extracurricular activities as much as you do. I’ve gotten in trouble with Chet more times than I can count,” he said, referring to the team’s owner. “He says ‘insurance doesn’t pay for stupidity.’ If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it a thousand times.”
“He’s right, but of course you know that.”
He shrugged. “You only live once.”
She rolled her eyes. “Are you hungry? I made lunch a while ago. I could heat it up for you.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
She got up and went into the kitchen. When the food was ready, she carried it into the living room on a tray. Ryan had tilted his head back against the sofa and his eyes were closed. He overdid it again, she thought, kneeling down next to him. She combed his wet hair with her fingers.
“Ry,” she whispered, tracing his jaw with her index finger. He didn’t stir, so she leaned in and kissed him.
He awoke with a start and stared at her. “Do it again.”
She kept her eyes open and fixed on his when she did as he asked. But before the kiss could spiral out of control, she pulled back. “You need to eat.”
“What did you make?”
“Tomato soup and grilled cheese.”
“Yum, cabin food.” He accepted the bowl of soup from her. “I used to crave that combo when I was here alone.”
“Why didn’t you just make it?”
“Without you?” he asked, horrified.
She smiled. “Eat up. I made you the usual three sandwiches.”
“My girl knows me.” He drained the bowl of soup and polished off three sandwiches in the time it took Susannah to eat one.
