by Sandra Field
Her chest felt so tight that she could scarcely breathe. She tried to scramble off the bed and felt Brant anchor her there with a hand around her wrist. Like a manacle, she thought, tugging at it, a manacle of steel, and heard him say with genuine desperation, “You’re not leaving—not until I know what’s wrong. We can’t run away from each other any longer, sweetheart, don’t you see that? It’s what we’ve done for years, me more than you, I know. But we’ve got to change, Rowan—or we’re lost.”
He was right, of course. Certainly she’d been running from telling him a secret that had torn at her soul. She threw herself facedown on the bed as the first sob forced its way from her throat, and from a long way away felt his arms gather her to his chest. He said forcibly, “I love you. No matter what, I love you. And I’m not going to go away. Never again.”
But would he still love her, Rowan wondered, when he knew? Often over the years Brant had praised her for her honesty, told her how much he depended on her capacity to stick to the truth. But once, three years ago, she’d lied to him, quite deliberately, with consequences she couldn’t possibly have foreseen and that had torn her apart.
How would Brant feel when she told him? Would he ever trust her again?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ROWAN began to weep in earnest, her body shuddering with the force of her emotion as she plunged into that dark place of loneliness that she knew so well. She cried for a long time; and it took her a long time to come back to herself, to the reality of Brant’s embrace, and of his voice murmuring soothing bits of nonsense into her ears. Gradually she became aware of two things. She’d needed to cry her heart out like that. Had needed to ever since she’d seen Brant at the airport in Grenada. And, secondly, this time she hadn’t been lonely. She’d been held and comforted within the circle of Brant’s arms and by the strength of his love.
She quavered, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, “I’ve got s-something to tell you.”
He reached over his shoulder and passed her a box of tissues. “Blow,” he said. She did as she was told, scrubbing at her wet cheeks and wondering if she looked as awful as she felt. He added flatly, “You don’t have to be frightened. Not of me.”
She hadn’t realized she looked frightened. She said in a rush, her words rattling like stones in a stream, “Two or three months before you left for Colombia, I went to the doctor. He suggested I come off the pill for a while, for medical reasons. So I did. But I didn’t tell you. I wanted a child so badly, and I thought if I got pregnant you’d be okay with it. You’d have to be.”
A quality in his silence made her glance up. He looked stunned, she thought, and felt terror close her throat. “I lied to you,” she said. “Not directly, in so many words—but it was a lie, nevertheless. I deliberately deceived you. And then you went away, even though I begged you not to...by the time you left, my period was three days late, I didn’t dare tell you that, how could I? As a way of keeping you home? I wasn’t going to play that game.”
She blew her nose again, blinking her wet lashes. “After you’d gone, I went back to the doctor and discovered I was pregnant. You and I talked a couple of times on the phone before the abduction, remember? But I didn’t know how to tell you, the connections were always so dreadful and I was so afraid of what you’d say... so I thought I’d wait until you came back.”
“And then I got dumped behind bars for eight months,” Brant said in an unreadable voice.
Because she was so frightened, Rowan spilled out the rest of the story without finesse. “They phoned me. From New York, to tell me you’d been captured and hidden away somewhere, they weren’t sure where, but they’d try and have some news for me in a day or so. A day or so,” she repeated, gazing at her trembling hands. “They might as well have said a lifetime.”
Even through her fear, she was aware of the rigidity of Brant’s muscles as he held her, of a quietness that was like the quiet before the howl of a hurricane. Hurriedly she went on, “I was upstairs because I’d been resting, I’d been having morning sickness and I was tired a lot of the time. As I put down the phone, the front doorbell rang, and I was instantly convinced it’d all been a hoax and it was you at the door, you’d come home, of course you had, I’d fallen asleep and dreamed that phone call from London. I ran for the stairs and I forgot about the carpet on the third step, it was rucked up, remember? I tripped over it and fell headlong down the stairs, and when I came to I was in hospital and I’d—I’d lost the baby.”
She was pleating the corner of the sheet with tiny, agitated movements, her lashes lowered. “I never told you. It was seven months before I saw you again, in the hospital room with Gabrielle. I suppose the miscarriage was one more reason I didn’t go into that room to see you. Why bother telling you I’d lost a child you hadn’t wanted in the first place, when you were—so I thought—in love with another woman?”
“My God...” said Brant.
She risked looking up at him. His face was haggard, his gaze turned inward; she had no idea what he was thinking. “I cheated you,” she said in a low voice. “I’m so sorry, Brant.”
He rasped, “I’m the one who was too busy to repair the carpet. You’d asked me to, and it would only have taken a few minutes. But I was too goddamned preoccupied with getting ready to go to South America to bother with something as mundane as a carpet.”
“It wasn’t your fault!”
“You could have been killed.”
“Brant, I could have fixed the carpet—it wasn’t exactly a difficult job. But I was too stubborn to, once I’d asked you to do it. Anyway,” she finished with a flash of spirit, “this isn’t about carpets. It’s about how I lied to you and tricked you.”
Harsh lines had carved themselves into his cheeks; she was suddenly achingly aware of the dusting of gray hair over his ears. “It’s about how you were alone when you fell down the stairs,” he said in a bleak voice, “and alone when you came to in the hospital. That’s what it’s about, Rowan. I wasn’t much of a husband, was I?”
She couldn’t bear to see him blame himself. “You were the only man I ever wanted to marry. Still are,” she said with the smallest of smiles.
“I never paid any attention when you said you wanted a child. I was scared to death of having children, but I didn’t tell you that, oh, no, I laughed at you instead.”
“Brant,” Rowan said vigorously, “we both made mistakes back then. Big ones. Are you saying you can forgive me for getting pregnant without telling you, and then...” her voice wavered “...losing the baby and not telling you that, either?”
He stroked her bare shoulder, his face as naked to her as his body. “Yes, I forgive you...although in all honesty I don’t think there’s much to forgive.”
“I felt so guilty! You don’t know how I’ve dreaded telling you, and yet I knew I couldn’t have any secrets from you, not if we’re going to try again...maybe that’s one reason I was procrastinating going to bed with you.”
“You nearly told me by the rocks in Martinique.”
She nodded. “I was afraid you’d get on the first plane back to Toronto.”
Brant pulled the sheet corner from her restless fingers and trapped them in his own. “No secrets,” he said heavily. “In that case I’d better tell you that forgiving myself is a lot harder than forgiving you.” He grimaced. “Can you ever forgive me, Rowan?”
She lifted his hand and kissed it, her lips lingering on his taut knuckles. “I already have.”
Briefly, he felt the prick of tears. Blinking them back, he muttered, “You’re very generous—more so than I deserve.”
She said emphatically, “I’ve learned something the last little while, Brant...since we met in Grenada, I mean. It’s you I really want Yes, I want children. But if I can’t have you, then nothing’s worthwhile.”
He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. “Let’s go back to Toronto and get married again,” he said in a muffled voice. “I’ll quit my job and we’ll do our best t
o start a baby, and somehow or other it’ll all work out.”
Her heart gave a lurch of pure panic. Wasn’t Brant giving her everything she’d longed for—marriage, a different job and a child? So why didn’t it feel right? Why was she still scared? No secrets, she thought, and said, “You should really want to be a father, Brant. It shouldn’t just happen and then you’ll make the best of it.”
“Perhaps when the baby’s real, when it exists, I’ll understand what fatherhood’s all about.”
He didn’t look convinced. Rowan said, “For now, think we should use protection.” She ran her fingers through her tousled curls, adding in frustration, “I’m the one who so desperately wants children, and I’m saying that? I wish to heaven I knew what was going on.”
“I’m as yellow-bellied as a chicken,” Brant said bluntly, “that’s what’s going on. The thought of having a kid—of being a father—scares me more than all the rebels in Colombia.”
“Oh,” said Rowan.
“So I think we should just jump off the deep end and trust there’s water in the pool.”
Rowan felt exhaustion wash over her. Brant was finally agreeing to start a child and she was telling him now wasn’t the time. It was like the plot of a very bad movie, she thought wildly, one where there was no sense to anything that happened. She said with a stubborn lift of her chm, “I don’t think we should start anything tonight.”
He drew back. “You don’t want to make love to me anymore?”
She glared at him, knowing she didn’t look the least bit loverlike and not caring one whit. “Yes, I want to make love to you. No, I don’t want to make love without protection. So there!”
“You know what I think we should do?” he said dryly. “Get some sleep...you look wiped, my darling, and five-thirty comes early.”
“I sound like an echo, I know I do, but don’t you want to make love to me?”
Brant grinned, guided her hand downward and said, “Sure I do. But I also want it to be perfect—we’ve waited a long time.”
From a wisdom she hadn’t known she possessed, Rowan said, “I don’t think perfection is the aim here. I mean, look at us three years ago—a smart young couple with interesting jobs, two cars, an expensive condo—I bet we looked perfect from the outside. And guess what? We got divorced.”
Brant’s fingertip followed a tearstain down her face. “Real,” he said. “Not perfect.”
“Splotchy eyes, red nose and all.”
His voice roughened. “Hair like fire, eyes dark as velvet and a body to die for.”
“You know what?” Rowan said jaggedly, “I’d do anything in the world for you.”
“Yeah? Then convince me you want me,” he said, a gleam in his eye.
“No problem,” said Rowan.
Her tiredness lifted as though it had never been, her smile combining mischief with provocation. Gracefully she rested her weight on him, feeling against her breasts and belly the abrasion of his body hair. She moved against him, slowly and with deliberate seduction, her hands roaming his thick hair, the width of his shoulders, the planes and angles of his torso. Passion flared in the blue of his irises; but he lay still, giving her the lead.
She slid lower, giving her fingers and her mouth full play, hearing him gasp in that mingling of pleasure and pain that she remembered so well. Then his control broke. Quickly he dealt with the foil envelope by the bed before lifting her to straddle him, guarding her sore knees; she sank down, filled with him, her face blurred with desire, her body melting with its heat.
What had been a game became an imperative. In quick fierce strokes Rowan rode him until suddenly Brant rolled over, carrying her with him, his big body covering her, his eyes glued to her face. “Now,” he said. “Now, Rowan.”
His deep thrusts had reached that place in her where only he had ever been. Her own rhythms surged to meet his until she was lost in the blue of his eyes, a blue like the blue at the base of a flame; consumed, she whispered his name over and again, like a mantra, and at her very core felt him pulse to his own release.
He pulled her to him, his heartbeat carrying her own with it in frantic duet. Then he said with the kind of honesty that’s hard-earned and is consequently rare, “I’ll never lose you again, Rowan, I swear...somehow we’ll work it all out. We’ve got to. You’re my life’s blood, I can’t live without you.”
“I mustn’t start crying again,” she mumbled. “Not twice in one evening...oh, Brant, I do love you.”
He kissed her, a kiss infused with loyalty and love. Rowan looped her arms around his neck, snuggled her face into his shoulder and gave a sigh of repletion. “I want to stay awake the whole night so I don’t miss one single moment of us in bed together again, it’s so lovely,” she said, and within two minutes was fast asleep.
Brant didn’t fall asleep right away. He settled himself more comfortably, enjoying the weight of Rowan’s thigh over his own, listening to the small steady voice of her heart against his chest. He thought he might burst with happiness. Simultaneously, because he now knew how much he had to lose, he realized he was still deeply frightened.
Fatherhood.
Rowan was a child who’d been wanted from the time of conception, he was sure of that. He’d always liked her parents, two people of intelligence and strong will who’d accomplished that not so minor miracle of remaining in love through years of marriage and raising children. Rowan’s sister Jane was a eye surgeon in a remote hospital in India; her brother was a biologist studying reindeer migrations in Siberia. Rowan’s parents had loved all three children and had encouraged them to go free.
His mother had loved him. In his memory she was a pretty, frightened woman, nervous, edgy and overly protective; when he’d grown old enough to understand such matters, he’d wondered if she hadn’t used up all her courage in leaving her husband when her only son was a baby.
His father had been very different. The several photos Brant had of Douglas Curtis showed a burly, dark-browed man scowling into the camera, surrounded by the corpses of whatever animals he’d just shot. Grizzly bears, mountain lions, Dall sheep, lions, tigers and elephants, the list was endless.
Douglas’s house had been a taxidermist’s heaven. Brant could remember all too well how terrified he’d been at the age of five of a polar bear that had been stuffed upright, its wickedly curved claws pawing the air, its gaping jaws set in a ferocious snarl. Not coincidentally, he’d done several articles in the last few years about poaching, big-game hunting, and the illegal trade in animal parts, a couple of them at some personal risk.
But he’d never exorcised his father.
He stroked the soft slope of Rowan’s shoulder, awed, as always, by the silkiness of her skin. Her breath escaped in a little sigh, its warmth against his chest touching him to the heart. He’d protect her with the last of his strength from any danger, he knew that in his bones. So could he also confront the demons of his past for her sake?
He had no answer to that question.
It was late when Brant finally fell asleep; he woke to the beep of his alarm clock. Rowan reached over, slammed it off and yawned. Then she gaped at him. “Oh, my goodness,” she said.
“A man in your bed,” Brant said lazily.
As he gave her a hug, she slid her hips closer to his. “A man to whom bird-watching isn’t a priority.”
“Have we got time to make love?” he asked, kissing first one breast and then the other, his tongue laving her nipples; to his gratification she was already trembling to his touch. “I’m good, aren’t I?” he said immodestly.
“Extraordinarily and magnificently good, and no, we don’t have time, not unless you want the whole group to miss the plane and me to get fired for seducing a client.”
“Wouldn’t it be worth it?”
She gave a throaty chuckle. “It might be more than—Brant, stop that!”
“But I like it,” he said, sliding his fingers deeper between her thighs and discovering she was only too ready to receive hi
m. Swiftly he entered her, watching her eyes darken and lose their laughter in an ardor that inflamed him. Then she reached over and kissed him, stroking his lips with her tongue, her hips opening to gather him in, rocking to his rhythm.
Their surrender was fierce, quick and mutual. Panting, Brant said, “I swear tonight I’ll show a little more subtlety.”
“How am I going to face them at breakfast?” Rowan moaned, her hands to her flushed cheeks. “It’ll be written all over me.”
“They’ll be too busy eating papaya to notice,” Brant said, hoping he was right. He patted her on the hip. “You can have the shower first.”
As she scrambled out of bed, she must have seen the torn foil envelope on the bedside table. She paled. “Brant, we didn’t use any protection.”
His swearword was unprintable, his dismay blatant. “It didn’t occur to me—I was always used to you being on the pill.”
“We’ve got to settle this whole business of having kids,” she said violently. “We’ve got to!”
He swung his legs to the side of the bed and stood up. “What you mean is, I’ve got to.”
“We’ve got to,” she said stubbornly. “We’re a couple now.”
“It’s a time in your cycle when you’re not likely to get pregnant,” he said in a level voice, “and we aren’t going to settle it between now and the time we have to catch the next plane. Shower, Rowan.”
She gave a sharp sigh of frustration. “Sometimes I hate my job!” she announced and stalked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Brant took the torn envelope and buried it in the wastebasket.
When Brant arrived at breakfast, a discreet few minutes after Rowan, Rowan’s gaze flew straight to his face. Her temper had vanished; he saw only love and anxiety in the dark pools of her eyes. He smiled at her, with neither the desire nor the ability to erase the love from that smile. Then he realized sheepishly that Steve was grinning at him, Sheldon looking puzzled, while Peg and May were exuding smugness. He stumbled, “Er—good morning. How did everyone sleep?”