Lovers' Reunion (Silhouette Treasury 90s)

by Anne Marie Winston

  “Until recently, I wished I had died, too.”

  The image that rose with her words was shocking. He squeezed her fingers gently, his mind spinning with the notion of a world without Sophie in it. “I’m glad you didn’t,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry Kirk died.” He wondered if she realized that was the first time he’d ever spoken her husband’s name.

  Other than the first time they’d made love again, he’d avoided thinking about the other man. It was simply easier to pretend he’d never existed. But that was no longer an option. Sophie had trusted him with her deepest hurts, her darkest memories, and they forever would be his, as well.

  She stood then, catching him off guard, and before he could speak she had climbed into his lap, straddling him with her legs and winding her arms around his neck. “Love me,” she whispered. “I need you.”

  He wrapped both arms around her, pulling her close and pressing her soft body against all the hard angles of his. The feel of her soft flesh pressed against him elicited a response he’d have sworn he couldn’t give again for a few hours, but he kept his mouth gentle and tender as he took hers. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her, that he needed her, too, but he sensed she needed time to simply feel, to reassure herself that she was alive, that he was alive, that what they had between them was real.

  Tomorrow, he promised himself before the heat they generated burned out all conscious thought. I’ll tell her tomorrow.

  Ten

  Marco was taking her out to dinner.

  Sophie stood on the stoop in front of his condo and checked her watch. He’d asked her to meet him at his place at six, but she was a few minutes early and it looked as though she’d beaten him here.

  Digging out the key he’d given her when he took possession, she let herself in and dropped her purse in the nearest chair.

  Make that the only chair. He’d done very little to furnish his place. A masculine leather couch and chair with two brass-and-glass tables and a single floor lamp completed the living room. In the kitchen he’d done even less, dispensing with a table altogether in favor of two stools at the bar dividing the kitchen from the living area.

  Though he’d never said so, she knew why he wasn’t expending a lot of time or energy on this condo. He didn’t expect to be here very long. He was doing everything in his power to get her to agree to marry him quickly.

  The familiar ache settled around her heart.

  But over the past weeks, as he’d cajoled, teased, persuaded and argued in favor of marriage, she’d caught herself dreaming that this could last. He’d been so caring and protective, so determined not to let her shut him out of her life, that she was beginning to hope that maybe he did care deeply for her. He hadn’t said so, yet, but she knew those words wouldn’t come easily to him. He’d been independent for a long time, and she knew Marco well enough to know that he never did anything without thinking it through from every angle first.

  Was it too much to hope for? Her heart didn’t think so, no matter how she cautioned herself.

  He’d been so wonderful last night, so gentle and tender. She still felt wrung out, slightly raw around the edges, from the emotional toll that speaking of her life with Kirk had exacted. Only Marco’s soothing attentions had eased the hurt that had risen again to torment her. Even so, all day, she’d operated in a fog, gone through her caseload at work on automatic pilot.

  When he had called and asked her if she wanted to go out to dinner, her first impulse was to decline, to suggest they stay in and have a quiet evening. But she didn’t have the energy to cook, and she figured he probably didn’t, either, if he was suggesting they eat out.

  She walked down the hall to the bathroom and washed her face and hands, then brushed her hair. Ah, better. She’d come straight from work and she felt slightly grubby, but Marco had specified six and she hadn’t had time to go home.

  As she walked back down the hall, she noticed the door of his extra bedroom ajar. He used it as an office, she knew, and he’d just purchased a gleaming mahogany desk at an auction a week ago. Stepping into the room, she checked out the look of the piece of furniture.

  But before she could really see it, her attention was caught by the pieces of paper spread all over the room. No, not spread, she thought, thrown. The floor was littered with papers, scattered helter-skelter as if an impatient hand had swept them from a neat pile, some twisted and crumpled, others torn completely in half.

  What on earth...? Kneeling, she automatically began to gather up some of the mess, glancing at the papers that weren’t too badly damaged to read, wondering if anything important had found its way into the trash heap. She smiled fondly. Marco had been so neat and tidy at her place; she never would have suspected that he was such a slob.

  But her smile faded as she read the words. Puzzlement replaced it.

  “Name: Marco C. Esposito, Ph.D.... Stanford University... applicants must complete all parts of the attached form....”

  She looked at another, and then another.

  “Seismic exploration... Universidad de Buenos Aires ... geological surveying expedition of Egypt... Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology... threemonth commitment to reconstruct and interpret lake histories... expedition funded in part by the University of Edinburgh....

  What on earth...?

  And then she knew. She had trouble taking the next deep breath. A fifty-pound weight settled directly on her chest, forcing her to take shallow, careful pants as she slowly turned her head and surveyed the chaos around her.

  She was sitting in the middle of Marco’s dreams... dreams that didn’t include her.

  Dozens upon dozens of applications for expeditions, for fieldwork opportunities, for geological exploration that would take him far from her and from home, were filled out. Each blank was meticulously filled with neat typing or Marco’s distinctive block printing, from a listing of his educational background to his previous expedition experiences. But when the listings of physical requirements began, the blanks were conspicuously empty. Many of the viciously ripped sheets of paper were torn directly across the section dealing with physical capabilities.

  Numbed disbelief gave way to a hurt so wide and deep she wanted to throw herself into the chasm and howl out her pain. All the time Marco had been romancing her—this time, as all the others—he’d been dreaming of getting away from Chicago and back to doing what he loved best.

  What he loved far more than he could ever care for her.

  The truth was a sharp blade cleaving through all her silly imaginings, neatly slicing away any hope she had of making a life with Marco. All the time she’d been so touched by his concentrated attentions, she’d been nothing more than a means of keeping Marco from fretting about the restrictions his knee injury imposed on the life-style he loved. His second choice.

  The wreckage around her was evidence of the pain that tormented him, pain he’d hidden from her, refusing to let her share in the feelings he was experiencing as if she were no more important than any casual relationship. And she supposed that she wasn’t. He never got angry. Several times she’d watched him gather his control and slide rage back into a compartment of his mind, covering it with charm, with flippant banter. Shutting her out so that he could go his own way as he had all his life.

  She was terribly cold, though the air-conditioning wasn’t set high, and she wrapped her arms protectively around herself, rocking forward, huddling in the middle of the wreckage of her life. She was too shattered to realize tears were called for, so she merely sat, wilted and waiting for the nurturing she realized she now knew she would never receive.

  Marco opened the door with a smile on his face and one hand behind his back. Sophie loved Chicago’s special Fannie May chocolates. And she would love this box more than usual. He’d had a ring designed for her, and finally it was ready, so he’d spent the day racing around making preparations for a memorable evening. The ring was hidden inside the box; he carried a bag with candles and champagne, as well as a f
resh bouquet he’d just picked up from the florist. Tonight the waiting would end. Tonight he planned to formally propose, to tell her he loved her, to end the dodging and evasions he’d allowed and get Sophie to set a wedding date.

  She wasn’t in the living room, and he frowned, seeing that she wasn’t in the kitchen, either.

  Setting down the candy box, the bag and the flowers, he walked down the hall. Maybe she’d decided to rest on his bed while she waited. She’d looked tired and drained this morning, and he’d worried about her all day.

  As he passed the door of his office, something distracted him from his search. He took three more steps toward the bedroom before his feet slowed. He pivoted, a feeling of dread congealing in his gut. He normally kept that door closed.

  As he reached the door of his office—the open door—the feeling of dread increased.

  Sophie sat on the floor in front of his desk, the trash can beside her.

  “What are you doing in here?” He knew his voice was sharp; he was struggling for calm.

  She didn’t answer him, and his uneasiness metamorphosed into anger. “This door was closed for a reason. Why are you snooping around in here?”

  Her head came up then, and her eyes met his. He couldn’t read anything in her expression, but the dull, glazed look in her eyes sent alarm surging through him. “I’m sorry,” she said in a polite, distant little voice. “The door was open. I was going to clean up....”

  She made a vague movement with her hand, then shook her head as if she forgot what she was going to say. With the creaky movements of a person many times her age, she carefully lifted herself from the floor and came toward the door. As she rose, scraps of paper fluttered away from her skirt.

  “Sophie?” Marco didn’t budge from his place in the doorway. So she’d seen the applications he’d filled out and then shredded during the first days he’d been here. Why was she acting like this?

  “I’m going home,” she said in a weary tone, stopping well short of him. “Please let me pass.”

  “Not until you tell me what you’re thinking.” He folded his arms, gripping the opposite biceps with his big hands until his fingers dug into muscle. Inside, panic was writhing and seething, boiling ever closer to the iron control he imposed on himself.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, there was a shadowed knowledge, a deep painful hopelessness that he’d never seen before. “I’m thinking I’ve been a fool,” she said. “Again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I should have learned my lesson the last time you left.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But I am,” she said. She took a deep breath, and her voice was stronger when she spoke again. “I deserve more than to be used for a distraction to keep your mind off the fact that you can’t travel anymore.”

  “You can’t leave!” he roared, and the desperation in his gut colored his voice. The control he so carefully wore vanished as his anxiety increased. “I’m not using you. What we have is important to me. Don’t you understand? My life, the life I had, is over. I can’t ever leave again. I’m going to be stuck behind a desk for the rest of my working days.”

  “And you’ve been using me to forget that.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “No?” She gestured at the wreckage of the room around them. “Then what’s this? Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you would have come back here, back to me, if you hadn’t torn up your knee?”

  Silence fell between them for one second, then two and three and four. And he saw what little light remained in her eyes dim and die. He couldn’t lie. Until he’d come home again he had never let himself acknowledge how badly he’d needed her. “It doesn’t matter why I came back,” he insisted, trying to erase the moment when he’d hesitated. “I’m here and I’m staying and we’re getting married and starting a family.”

  But she was shaking her head. For the first time he saw a sheen of tears in her eyes but she kept speaking. “No, Marco, we aren’t.”

  “You have to,” he insisted, completely thrown by her implacable certainty. He couldn’t lose her! “You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to be the mother of my children.”

  Sophie visibly shrank in on herself, drawing into a small, stiff block of a body that practically shouted, “No touching allowed.” He wanted to reach for her, but he could sense that the thin thread with which she was hanging on to her composure was stretched to the breaking point.

  “You’re not the settling down kind, Marco,” she said quietly. “And we’d both be lying to ourselves if we pretend you are.” She bowed her head then, and he could see that she had become a smooth, blank wall off which any words would bounce; there was no point in trying to talk to her now.

  Slowly he stepped aside, and she practically bolted through the doorway. In an instant he heard the front door slam, and he stood unmoving while her engine started up and she drove away.

  She was wrong! He’d known she had reservations, but all the while—all this time—she’d been expecting him to leave her again. She hadn’t trusted him to stay, to care for her. Still, in the past few weeks she’d begun to let down her guard. He’d known she was releasing her determination to resist him, and he’d reveled in it.

  It was only now that he realized how precious a gift she had given him. He’d hurt her deeply when he’d walked away from her before. A second chance was a lot to ask, and he hadn’t asked, he’d demanded.

  He’d taken, taken, taken from Sophie and had given her so little in return. He hadn’t even told her he loved her, he suddenly remembered.

  And if he tried to tell her now, she’d never believe him.

  As he stood in the doorway, looking at the ruined applications, it came to him again that the life he wanted wasn’t off somewhere around the globe. It had been right here in Chicago all the time, and he’d been too stupid to see it until it was too late.

  He alternately paced and forced himself to sit, killing the rest of the lonely evening. Sophie had been so distraught that he knew she needed time; it would do neither of them any good if he showed up at her place tonight.

  He slept badly and very little, and when the clock told him it was morning, he rushed through showering and getting dressed, forgetting breakfast altogether. If he hurried, he could catch Sophie before she went to work. He couldn’t wait one more minute to get things settled between them.

  As he drove to her condo, confidence began to grow within him again. He’d tell her he loved her. She’d listen when he explained that those applications had been filled out weeks ago, right after he’d first come home. Before he’d realized that everything he wanted was right here. He wasn’t waiting a day longer to start living the rest of his life with the woman he loved.

  She wasn’t home.

  He was disappointed, deeply so, but not panicked. He’d known her to go in to work early on occasion. If she’d slept as badly as he, she probably decided she might as well go do something useful since she couldn’t sleep, he thought, driving the expressway toward downtown. Well, she had a surprise coming.

  She wasn’t at work.

  “I’m sorry,” said a pleasant-faced woman whose name tag read “Josephina” behind the secretary’s desk. “Sophie is going to be out of the office for a few. weeks. May I give her a message?”

  No, dammit, Josephina could not give her a message.

  As he climbed into his car and drove back to the northwestern suburbs, his mind was whirling with confusion and a meltdown of the calm he’d imposed on himself in the secretary’s office. Where could she have gone?

  She couldn’t just take off without telling him.

  Of course she could. As far as she knows, there’s nothing holding her to you. Did you give her any reason to think there was?

  Yes. Yes, he had. Maybe not in so many words, but surely she knew how he felt about her.

  Didn’t she?

  Her mother hadn’t heard from her. Neither h
ad any other members of her family, and he had the added guilt of making them worry. He didn’t know of any other place she might have gone, and there was nothing else to do but go home.

  At eight that evening the telephone rang. He’d been hoping all day that she would call; he practically leaped over the bar to get to the phone. “Hello?”

  But it wasn’t Sophie. It was her sister Vee, and he listened numbly as she explained in halting, embarrassed phrases that they had heard from Sophie, that she had asked them to tell Marco she was fine and not to worry, that she had specifically requested that they not share her location with him.

  He hung up in dazed silence. All his adult life he’d known Sophie was there, loving him, waiting for him. There’d never been a day when he’d doubted that, until he’d come home to learn she had married. And even then his doubt had been short-lived and his world had returned to normal the first time Sophie came into his arms.

  Now there was no Sophie in his world, and nothing else mattered. Nothing at all.

  Wisconsin was even more pleasant in the summer than it had been during the autumns she’d visited there. Her cabin was tucked in among cool trees and she could walk down to the lake for a swim anytime she liked.

  She could have been in a jail cell for all the notice she gave her surroundings.

  Someday the pain would ease. She had to keep telling herself that or she’d have been tempted to swim out to the middle of the lake and let herself sink. But her life had been crushed before, and she’d survived. And the pain had gone away. Even though she wanted to scream and weep every time she thought of Marco, even though she didn’t ever recall feeling quite so devastated or despairing when Kirk died, she would survive this.

  And if she repeated that often enough, maybe someday she’d even believe it.

  All she did, day and night, was think of him. A thousand little things reminded her of him during the day. She would see an unusual rock formation she knew he’d enjoy, she’d want to share a loon’s call, some phrase on the television would remind her of something he’d said, a set of broad shoulders would make her heart leap until she realized it wasn’t him.