Everything inside her was shaking. Splitting apart into agonizing shards.
She crumpled his handkerchief tightly inside her fist. “You don’t want children because of Anthony.”
“Because of everything in my life,” he ground out. “This is my life here.” He pointed at the floor. “I’ve finally got it together. No drugs. No booze. And the reason I’m able to keep it that way is because I finally stopped thinking I could have the things I can’t. Like a son. Like a family.”
“So what was I? Just a…good time? Entertainment for a few days?”
His jaw looked so tight it was nearly white. “Do you think I didn’t know you wouldn’t leave, too? Sooner or later everyone I care about does!”
She shook her head. “That’s not true, Max.”
“My father. My mother. Anthony.” His gaze bored into hers. “You.”
“I wouldn’t leave if you asked me to stay,” she managed carefully.
“Even without getting that baby you want so badly?”
Her chest squeezed. She could hardly breathe.
“See?” His voice cut through her silence. “Maybe you’d stick for a little while. At least try. But you wouldn’t be able to keep from wanting more.” His lips twisted. “Sooner or later, you’ll head back to that corner office of yours in Atlanta and order up another donation from that place in California.”
“No. You’re wrong.” She moistened her lips. “I won’t go back to Atlanta. I resigned when I was there. I’m just an unemployed woman now.”
Something came and went in his eyes. “Just another small detail you didn’t think I’d be interested in knowing? Or didn’t you know how to bring that up, either?”
She winced, feeling as if his words were nails sealing a coffin. “I told you I wasn’t good with relationships.” She pushed off the bed, looked around blindly for the red dress she’d worn the day before. The dress he’d peeled off of her as if he’d been revealing something precious to him. “It’s not a defense,” she added. “It’s just the truth. I’ve never met anyone like you, Max. And it’s all happened so fast that I still feel dizzy from it.” Fresh tears glazed her vision. “And I know all of this is my fault. You’ve done nothing to deserve any of this.”
She finally spotted the fabric sticking out from beneath the jeans he’d worn the day before and snatched it up, jerking it over her head before dropping the towel she’d held clutched around her. She yanked the full skirt down around her knees and picked up the towel, nearly tripping herself in the process. She folded it in half and left it on the bed. “I should have told you. And if I couldn’t do that, I should never have gotten involved with you.” She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear to. “I just couldn’t seem to do either. I am so, so very sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” His voice was low.
The words seemed to echo around the bedroom.
Final.
“I…I don’t have a car here,” she finally said.
For a long moment, he said nothing. And then he headed out of the bedroom. “I’ll get my keys.”
She sank her teeth into her lip, choking back the pain.
If the only thing left that she could give him was to remove herself from his life with some measure of tattered dignity, then that’s what she would do.
She wiped her eyes one more time with his handkerchief, folded it carefully along the original creases back into a square and left it on his dresser. Then she found her shoes and her purse, rigidly keeping her gaze from straying to the bed. His bed. Which she’d never share again.
She straightened her shoulders and she followed him out of the apartment. Down the stairs. To his truck.
The sun was bright, the sky clear, the sweeping display of flowers at the entrance of the apartment complex’s parking lot full and vibrant.
Proof that a perfectly beautiful summer day didn’t care at all about a broken heart.
* * *
“Here.” Tanner handed Max a stack of small, square envelopes. “Make sure these get to the controllers over in the tower, would you? They’re invitations to the launch party next week. Didn’t put anyone’s names on them, so just give ’em out to anyone you see there and tell them to pass it on.”
Max took the stack. “Anyone else?” He glanced across at Tanner, who was sitting behind his office desk at the flight school.
“Probably,” Tanner muttered, flipping through the pages-long list he was studying. “Seems like we’ve already invited everyone in Red Rock to this shindig, but Jordana keeps reminding me of someone else we shouldn’t miss.”
Max’s gaze drifted to the framed photographs on the credenza behind his boss’s desk. One of them was of Tanner’s wife. Her hair was darker than Emily’s. Her eyes brown. But there was still a resemblance if you looked.
And looking was as pointless as probing a sore tooth and a helluva lot more painful.
He jerked his gaze away. Focused instead on Tanner’s list. The launch party was going to be held right there at the hangar on the Fourth of July. A traditional Texas barbecue, with games for the kids and tours of the hangar, as well as a chance to see the fancy new executive jets that were already booked for charters six months in advance. “What about Gary’s son and his family?”
Tanner flipped a few pages. “Jack. Taken care of already.”
Max nodded. Fanned the invitations in his hand and checked the time on his watch. “I’ll run these over now.” He’d be back before the last set of applicants for the receptionist position were due to come in.
The stack of four hundred resumes had risen to five hundred sixty-two. He’d read every one of them.
Not hard to do when he hadn’t been able to spend so much as five minutes in his own bed anymore. Since Emily left, he’d been bunking on the couch, and not sleeping much there, either.
The bright spot was that the resumes had been culled and Max was interviewing the last three candidates that afternoon.
Tanner was nodding. “While you’re over at the terminal, see if you can make some headway with the maintenance supervisor on getting all that construction equipment cleared before the party. We’re going to need the parking space available.”
“Will do.” Max turned to go.
“And Max—”
He paused, waiting.
Tanner looked at him. His dark gaze seemed vaguely uncomfortable, which was pretty unsual for the straightforward former Air Force man. “I didn’t want to mention it, but Jordana’s been asking me every day.”
And what Jordana wanted, Tanner tried his level best to provide. Max had seen that for himself. “Mention what?”
“Emily’s refusing to come to the party,” Tanner finally said abruptly. “Naturally, Jordana wants her there, but Emily says she’s not doing anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
Max sucked down every speck of emotion that he could.
It had been well over a week since he’d driven Emily back to her sister’s.
At the time, it had felt like he’d been driving to his own funeral.
She’d sat, rigid and quiet, not crying a single tear though her face was still splotchy. When he’d pulled up in front of Wendy and Marcos’s house, she’d pushed open the door and looked back at him, her eyes like bruises. “Thank you for driving me,” she’d said, before slipping off the seat and closing the door. “It was very kind of you.”
Finishing school polite, that was his Emily Fortune.
Only she wasn’t his. Never had been, even when he’d let himself think she was. And now he knew she never would be.
He could have gotten past her withholding the fact that she’d been trying to get pregnant. Once the shock started to abate, he was reasonable enough to understand her motivation, even if he wished to heaven that she’d been honest with him.
But it didn’t change the end result.
She wanted babies more than she wanted him.
Choice made. End of discussion.
End of everything.
He moved his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Doesn’t matter one way or the other to me,” he told Tanner.
His boss studied him for a long moment, obviously deciding whether or not to believe him. Then he finally nodded and looked back at his list. “Okay.”
Max left, feeling more like it was an escape. He swiftly crossed the tarmac toward the terminal, using his ID to get through the employee entrance. He’d hunt down the maintenance supervisor before taking one of the airport trucks out to the tower.
He made his way through the terminal, hating that every time he saw a woman with white-gold hair, he wanted to do a double take. Emily wasn’t going to come back and tell him that she was wrong. That he, and he alone, would be enough for her.
He lengthened his stride even more, focusing harder on the square invitations in his hands than the healthy activity of travelers passing through, just wanting to get to the maintenance office as quickly as he could. The big, colorful beach ball that came out of nowhere rolled right across his path, his foot connecting solidly and sending it careening ahead of him.
He muffled a curse, automatically glancing around for the ball’s owner as he jogged forward, catching the thing before someone accidently tripped over it. Palming the blow-up ball, he looked around for the culprit who’d let it loose.
“Sorry, Max. So sorry!” Kelsey Fortune was trotting toward him, her auburn hair bouncing against the backpack she had hitched over her arm. She reached him and held out her hands for the ball. “I warned Coop that bringing the ball was going to be a nuisance.” Her smile was bright. Either oblivious or polite enough to overlook the way Max had stiffened. “He figured it would help entertain Anthony on the plane,” she went on. “I’ve already dropped it twice, if you can believe it.”
Max handed over the ball, his gaze cutting past her. But he saw no sign of Coop or the man’s son. “Taking a trip?”
She nodded and looked up at him. Even wearing cowboy boots with her dark blue jeans, she wasn’t a tall woman. “Just over to California for a few days.” Her lips tilted even more. “Disneyland. And frankly, I can’t wait to see Cooper fit himself into the Dumbo ride with Anthony.”
Despite everything, Max found the thought vaguely amusing, himself. Cooper wasn’t as tall as Max was, but the rancher had the shoulders of a linebacker. “Sounds like a good time.”
“Yeah.”
A squeal brought their heads around. “Mama!”
And suddenly, a short, dark-haired bullet appeared, streaking between the legs of anyone who stood between him and his intended target.
Max stared, watching the little boy’s chubby calves beneath the comically large cargo shorts he wore pump in concert with his fisted hands and arms. He was only peripherally aware of Cooper Fortune following hard on the tot’s heels as the kid steamrolled right up to Kelsey’s legs, plowing into her with all the might he had.
Max automatically shot up an arm to keep her from being knocked over by the pint-size bulldozer.
But, evidently, Kelsey was used to such exuberance, and held her ground, just dumping her backpack on the ground and sweeping up the little boy high in her arms, instead.
And then Max found himself staring at a pair of dark brown eyes that stared straight back.
A year could bring a lot of changes to a little boy.
Anthony had been just an infant when Max handed him over to the police. And even though Max could still see in Anthony’s face the baby he’d been—the one Max had fumbled through bottle feedings and diaper changes with, not knowing what the hell he was doing at first—now that baby had shiny little white teeth poking out of his grinning gums, and was running.
“Man!” The shout burst out of Anthony, as if he only had one sound level, loud.
It startled Max nearly as much as the chubby hand that Anthony waved out to pat against Max’s face.
“Yes, that’s a man,” Kelsey was laughing, though the look she shot Max was uncertain.
Cooper stopped next to them. He was carrying a backpack, too, as well as a cumbersome-looking child safety seat. “He’s just stopped calling every guy he sees—” he suddenly broke off when his wife hissed a soft “Coop” from the corner of her mouth.
“Daddy,” Max guessed, probing for that old ache, as well, and not finding it quite as easily as he expected. Probably because it was buried under the other pain.
The Emily pain.
Kelsey was nodding. “And instead is calling them man,” she finished. Her smile was sympathetic as she pressed her cheek against Anthony’s shoulder.
Anthony, however, had quickly turned his attention from one “man” to his father. “Daddeeeeeeeeeee,” he squealed, reaching out for Cooper.
Max couldn’t help but smile a little. “Looks like he’s got it down,” he observed and Kelsey laughed, nodding.
Cooper took his son, hefting him up to his shoulder where Anthony latched on to his daddy’s hair like he’d done it hundreds of times before. The resemblance between the two was plain for anyone to see.
“He, uh, he looks good,” Max told them. “I like the shirt.” He nodded toward Anthony who wore a Rangers T-shirt tucked into his big-boy cargos.
“Cooper took him to Opening Day,” Kelsey said. “I think he’s a little disappointed that Anthony hasn’t managed ‘eh-batter-eh’ yet.”
Max reached up and shook Anthony’s hand. “You gonna be a ball player, Tony, as well as a rancher like your dad?”
Anthony grinned and swatted Max’s hand. An eighteen-month-old high five, he guessed. “I can’t believe how much he’s grown.”
“You wouldn’t believe how much he eats, either,” Coop said. “Kid’s gonna send me to the poorhouse feeding him at Disneyland.”
“Right.” Max opened his palm, letting Anthony swat it again. They were there to catch a flight, not just roam the walls of the Red Rock terminal. Max gently bumped his palm against Anthony’s one last time and started to move away. His throat was tightening. “You guys have a great time.”
“We will.” Cooper looked like he wanted to say something. For that matter so did Kelsey. But after a moment, she just reached down and picked up her backpack and tucked the ball under her arm, and the couple turned to go.
Anthony craned around, grinning at Max as they went. He lifted his hand, his fingers opening and closing.
Max started to wave back. Realized he was still holding the party invitations.
“Coop.” The word shot out of his mouth before he could take time to regret it.
The other man stopped. Turned around. “Yeah?”
“Here.” He headed forward, held out one of the invitations. “We’re having a barbecue on the Fourth of July,” he said. “Over at the flight school. Celebrating the holiday as well as our launch of Redmond Charter. If you’re back, maybe you and your…family…will think about coming.” His gaze strayed to Anthony. The kid was blowing raspberries now, his cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk. “There’ll be plenty of barbecue,” he added, chuckling a little. “Bring a container and stock up for the little guy.”
Cooper reached out slowly and took the envelope. “Thanks, Max.” He smiled slowly. “We’ll be there.”
Not entirely sure what he’d done, except that he was oddly glad he’d done it, Max nodded toward the travelers starting to congest around the security gate. “You’d better get moving,” he advised. “New security crew. They’re thorough as heck but slow. You wouldn’t want to miss the Dumbo ride.”
“Dum-moh!” Anthony latched on the word, yelling it at the top of his lungs. He slapped his hands down on Cooper’s head. “Dum-moh!”
“Thanks,” Cooper said dryly. “You had to say the D-word, didn’t you?” He lifted his hand, sketching a wave, and turned with his wife.
Max watched them go, listening to Anthony’s young voice chanting louder than all of the noise in the terminal combined.
And finally, knowing that he had to get to the maintenance office and the tower before his interviewees arrive
d, he turned away.
But for the first time in over a week, he felt a smile on his face. And this one wasn’t forced.
Chapter Thirteen
“Ms. Fortune. This is Joanna at the Armstrong Fertility Institute. We’ve had a cancellation in our schedule next week and would be able to fit you in for your initial consultation if you’re available. Please call me right away at area code six-one—”
Emily pressed a button on her phone, deleting the voice mail message that she’d already listened to twice.
“Come on.” Wendy nudged her shoulder from behind. “Jordana’s gonna skin us alive if we’re any later than we already are, and Marcos is waiting with the baby in the car.”
Emily stood up from the kitchen chair where she’d been sitting and unlooped the bulging diaper bag from her sister’s arm so she wouldn’t have to juggle that as well as the stacks of pink bakery boxes containing the pastries she’d prepared for the picnic. The reason they were late was because Wendy kept changing her mind about what she might or might not need to take for MaryAnne. “Are you sure there’s nothing else we need to grab? Maybe the kitchen sink, too?”
Wendy made a face and carefully moved through the front door so as not to disturb her baked cargo. “Make sure it’s locked.” She started down the few shallow steps toward the sidewalk.
Emily set the lock and followed.
She still felt certain that she shouldn’t be going to Tanner’s big party. But Jordana kept insisting that she and Tanner needed more help with all of the activities they’d planned and Emily couldn’t very well refuse, even if the thought of running into Max was nearly more than she could stand.
If Jordana was to be believed, Max had specifically said he didn’t mind that Emily would be there.
She didn’t dare let herself read too much into that. If Max had said no, she would have honored it, and taken her lumps with Jordana. But he hadn’t.
She realized that Wendy was waiting for her at the car, obviously needing assistance, and she hurried forward. “Sorry.” She helped her sister settle the boxes securely in the trunk, then climbed in the backseat where MaryAnne was already positioned, sound asleep, in her car seat.
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