You Belong to Me

by You Belong to Me (NCP) (lit)

  "I have all the time in the world." Max laid his napkin on the table. "Shall we adjourn to the living room?" He was being unnecessarily sarcastic and curt.

  "Not there." Julie didn't want Mrs. O'Brien to interrupt by suddenly appearing on the scene and she needed to be near Trey. "In my room." She hurried through the living room and sped down the hall with Max close on her heels.

  His obviously foul mood made Julie want to get this over as quickly as possible. Once inside the sitting room, she dropping into a straight-backed chair and waited for Max to seat himself across from her before saying: "I'll make this short and sweet. I'm going to Summerville tomorrow." It was not a journey she looked forward to but it was a necessary one. She wanted to tie up the last few loose ends of her old life before embarking on a new one. "And I won't be coming back to Half Moon." Pain closed around her heart like a clenching fist.

  "Just like that?" Max snapped his fingers. "This time do I get an explanation?"

  Julie didn't want to cry, and that's what she was dangerously near doing. "There's nothing to explain."

  "So you're going back to Royce." Max's hands griped the arms of his chair. "I know you've been in touch with him even though you promised you wouldn't."

  Sudden anger singed through Julie's sorrow. "How did you know that?"

  "I pay the bills around here. That includes your telephone bill. I know every call you've made for the past three months." Max slumped in his chair. "Go on, go back to your lover if he means that much to you."

  Conflicting and disturbing emotions surged through Julie. "I'm not going back to Royce."

  "You're going back to Summerville. What's the difference?"

  Was that what Max thought? Suddenly it seemed important to disabuse him of that foolish notion. "I'm not going to stay in Summerville. I'm going there to sign some papers and collect my belongings."

  "And is one of those 'belongings' Royce Garner?" Max spoke with barbed malice. "I think you should remember that legally you're still my wife."

  "I'll be alone." What a ring of finality those words had. "I've rented a condo in Houston and I've found a job there, too."

  "And now, after the fact, you've decided to tell me, your husband, of your plans?" His mouth pulled into to a thin angry line. "Am I to assume from what you've told me that, along with Royce, Trey and I no longer have a place in your life?"

  He was lumping himself and Trey together, as if the two of them were inseparable. A twist of fear began to climb up Julie's spine. "I would never leave Trey. You know that!"

  "And who's going to care for him while you're working?"

  "I've made arrangements for him to be well cared for while I'm at work."

  Leaning toward her, Max narrowed his gaze. "Do you really think I would let you take Trey away from Half Moon?"

  Julie spoke with more bravado than she felt. "I don't know how you can stop me."

  With cold formality, Max informed her, "There are many ways and I don't care which one I resort to just as long as I keep my son here with me."

  Julie's voice trembled. "Don't threaten me, Max. I have to be near Trey, I'm his mother."

  Max cut to the heart of her argument and struck it down with one sharp reply. "There are such things as surrogate mothers."

  An insidious thought began to unravel in Julie's troubled mind. Did Max have some idea that she would bow out of the picture leaving the field clear for Andrea to be a mother to her baby? "I'm not going to give my baby to you and Andrea."

  Max gasped, "Andrea?" His eyes opened wide. "What the hell does she have to do with this?"

  Pain pushed Julie to her feet. "Why don't you tell me? I know you're still seeing her. I know you never stopped calling her." She stood looking down at him and waiting for him to speak. All she heard was a strained and stilted silence. "I know she wants you back."

  He didn't even bother denying his guilt. "Who told you?"

  "Nobody." Julie was too confused and hurt to even consider lying. "I overheard a telephone conversation between you and Andrea Thanksgiving evening." She waited, hoping against hope that he would offer some explanation for that betrayal. After another long space of heavy, empty silence she realized he wasn't going to do that. She sat in her chair too hurt to speak.

  Max demanded, "How did you get into my office?"

  "I bullied Mrs. O'Brien into unlocking the door."

  "So you were eavesdropping?"

  "I didn't intend to eavesdrop. When I picked up the receiver she was talking to you and crying." Julie's eyes filled with tears. "I listened and then I knew."

  Max turned his head to one side and frowned. "Knew what, exactly?"

  Julie had never attempted to put her knowledge into words. "I heard what the two of you said to each other."

  "And what was that?" Max demanded in a gritty voice.

  How cleverly he had managed to put her on the defensive. "She called you darling."

  "That's it?" Max asked incredulously. "You heard Andrea call me darling and you decided to leave me?"

  "Then you said you'd call her again in a day or so. You said she shouldn't do anything to make the situation worse."

  Max set his elbow on the chair arm and put his chin in his hand. "I won't try to defend myself. It wouldn't do any good. Just like every time before you've tried and convicted me on circumstantial evidence." His voice broke. "If that's the way you feel maybe its best if you do go."

  Julie's heart began to beat a little faster. Was there an explanation? She admitted, almost unwilling, that the evidence was just that, circumstantial. And she had never really listened with an open mind to anything Max had tried to tell her. "If there is some explanation, I'd like to hear it. Maybe it would change the way I feel."

  Max shook his head. "I doubt that. You've always preferred to take someone else's word over mine. First it was your mother and then Jean and now it's Royce."

  His words impacted with sudden force. How quickly one moment of truth could lie bare years of self-delusion. She had been swayed like a twig in the wind, first by Mamma, then by Jean, and after that by Royce. "I'm willing to listen now."

  "It's too late for explanations or recriminations," Max said on a note of finality. "It's over, Julie and this time for good. So go on, do what you please. None of this really matters anymore."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Those words rang in Julie's ears like the trumpet of doom. "It matters to me." Only moments ago she had been so sure she could walk away without a backward glance. Now she realized that was the one thing she couldn't do. "It matters more than you know." How blind she had been not to recognize what had been before her eyes all the time. She loved Max, and if you love someone, you trust them. She reached across the small space that separated them, laid her hand on his knee and felt him flinch. "Please, please, Max, tell me." The longings and regrets of twenty years were echoed in her impassioned plea. "I need to know."

  Surprise tilted his head to one side. "Do you promise to listen this time?"

  She would and she quickly said so and then begged. "Please, Max, talk to me."

  With a sigh and less than his usual grace, Max stood and brushed a hand through his hair. "When you left me the first time it was because you thought I was having an affair with Lucie and I wasn't."

  A chill shook through Julie. Was it possible that Max was telling the truth? But hadn't he always argued that there was nothing between him and Lucie until after he and Julie were divorced? "I'm sorry if I misjudged you. I was a confused, immature little girl."

  "You did and you were." Max paced across the room before turning to face her. "You never gave me a chance to prove myself. Instead you ran back to Summerville and because your mother thought you should, you divorced me."

  Julie wanted to argue that the divorce was her idea. Looking back she had to admit she would never have gone through with divorcing Max if her mother hadn't insisted that she must. "I've been so wrong about so many things."

  "Maybe I should have given u
p then," Max said, "But I couldn't let go. When I came back to Summerville five years later it was with the express purpose of winning you back. I had so much more to offer you. A measure of security, the chance to travel, some of the nicer things money could buy. When I offered you these things you threw them back in my face and sent me packing. Then you moved in with Royce Garner."

  Touched by his words, and hurt by his accusations, Julie protested, "That wasn't the way it was. I--"

  Max held up his hand to stop her interruption. "Let me finish, please."

  Julie lapsed into silence.

  Max leaned against the wall and slipped his hands into his pockets. "When I came back to Summerville for Shannon's wedding, I had about given up any hope that someday you'd come back to me. After that night at the gravel pit, I knew I had to try one more time to convince you that you belonged to me and with me. Things might have worked out if Shannon hadn't decided to run off with Brett and get married and if Mitzi hadn't called Andrea and invited her to Summerville."

  Julie's voice lifted in surprise. "Mitzi asked Andrea to come to Summerville? I thought you asked her there." Nodding toward the chair across from her, Julie pleaded, "Sit down, Max, please."

  Max lowered his tense body into the chair. "I'd been trying to get rid of Andrea for months. She'd become too serious and too possessive. Her showing up at the Hungry Farmer was the last straw. I told her in no uncertain terms it was over but the damage had already been done."

  His sincerity argued for belief. Cautiously Julie asked, "What damage?"

  "What damage?" Max retorted angrily. "How can you ask such a question? After Andrea made her little appearance you decided to marry a man you'd been living with for years without benefit of clergy."

  "Is that what you believe?" Julie realized with sudden insight, that Max had every reason to think she and Royce were lovers. "I haven't 'lived with' Royce for years. Our short little affair lasted less than a year."

  "Do you expect me to believe that?"

  "If I can believe what you say about Lucie, why can't you believe what I'm telling you about Royce and me?"

  Max raised one eyebrow. "And do you?"

  In the space of one exonerating second, the revelation came: She either trusted Max or she didn't. The choice was hers to make. Julie took a deep breath and did something she had never dared do before. She took a blind leap of faith. Looking directly into his troubled eyes, she uttered a resounding, "Yes. I do, implicitly."

  It was obviously not the answer Max had expected. "You do?"

  A quiet elation filled Julie's heart. She did! She believed him! "Yes, I do. Will you give me a chance to tell you about my relationship with Royce?"

  "You don't need to do that. I believe you too."

  Even if he did, he deserved an explanation. "I want to."

  Reaching for her hand, Max held on. "Then go ahead."

  In the quiet of a comfortable room, with Max holding onto her hand, Julie began to speak, reluctantly at first, because admitting her mistakes and failures was so difficult. She began by telling Max about how guilty she still felt about trapping him into marriage when he was so very young. "It was wrong. I know that now."

  Max protested, "I always thought it was the other way around. I got you pregnant. You had to marry me. That's why I didn't fight the divorce. I didn't feel I had the right."

  "Oh, Max, darling, no!" Julie cried, "You didn't trap me. I wanted to marry you." After a short pause, she observed, "We've both been a couple of idiots."

  With a nod, Max agreed, then urged, "Go on with your story."

  Julie got a firmer grip on Max's hand and began once more to speak. Her confession gained momentum and her voice became more confident. She related, for the first time, the terrible ordeal of her abortion, and the trauma of her mother's lingering illness and subsequent death. By the time she began to speak of how Jean had befriended her when she had needed someone so desperately, confessing had become a catharsis, a way to purge her mind and soul of old and painful memories. "In so many ways, Jean took Mamma's place in my life."

  Max's eyes were bright with unshed tears. "I should have been there when you needed someone. I've let you down so many times...."

  Julie raised her hand to stop his self-denunciation. "What happened to me was not your fault. I won't have you shouldering the blame. Please let me talk while I still have the courage to speak honestly and openly."

  Nodding, Max squeezed her hand. "Yes, please, go on."

  Then Julie told how over the next several months, she and Jean had become fast friends. "I was so grateful to Jean. Then she died and left her share of the restaurant to me. I know now that was her way of making sure I'd be around for Royce. Jean had always taken care of Royce. That's what she wanted me to do after she was gone." Remembering brought tears to her eyes. Royce and I were both so lost that first year Jean was gone. We began an affair barely three months after she passed away. There was never any fire or passion and after awhile we both realized there never would be. But we remained friends and through the years we leaned on each other more and more. Finally our mutual dependency took on the aspects of an addiction." Swallowing over the tears that had collected in her throat, she confessed, "I never realized until I came to Half Moon, and could view our alliance through distance and perspective, how sick my relationship with Royce really was."

  Throughout Julie's last discourse Max had sat still as a statue, holding onto her hand and hanging on to her every word. Now he broke his self-imposed silence. "Julie, darling, you're the strongest person I know. The courage you showed the night Trey was born proved that to me."

  "It's not courage when you can't escape," Julie admitted, recalling the trauma of that long painful night. "You were the strong one."

  "So strong that I fainted and fell on the floor." Max smiled as he remembered, "And don't belittle what you did that night." He took her hand again. "Can you believe that Andrea means nothing to me and that I haven't been near her since the night we spent at the gravel pit?"

  Julie was trying but trust was new to her and didn't come all that easily. "Why did you continue to call her after we came to Half Moon?"

  The tense lines around Max's mouth deepened. "I wanted to protect you. I knew how bad stress was for you. God knows I'd put you through enough already. Andrea threatened to come to the ranch and confront you. She had some silly notion that I was staying with you out of a sense of duty. I was so afraid she'd come here and upset you, and you'd react as you always had before and run back to Royce. So I lied to her and I lied to you." Dropping her hand, he stood. "Damn it, Julie, "I love you. I didn't want to lose you again." He swore and strode toward the door. "So I lied. So sue me."

  Jumping to her feet, Julie pursued him. "Max! Stop!" She caught his arm and pulled him around to face her. "You said you loved me." Sheer wonder shimmered through her voice. "Is that true?"

  "I've loved you since you were fourteen-years-old." His shoulders lifted as if that admission had ridded him of a great burden. "You belong to me. I'll love you until the day I die."

  Julie hurled herself against him and threw her arms around his neck. "Max you idiot, why didn't you tell me that a long time ago?"

  He slid his arms around her waist. "I didn't think you returned those feelings." Pulling her close, he asked softly, "Do you?"

  She stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, "I've loved you since I was fourteen-years-old. You belong to me. I'll love you until the day I die."

  Resting his chin on the top of her head, Max sighed into her hair. "And you aren't leaving me. I won't let you go, not now."

  "You couldn't drive me away." Julie melted into his embrace.

  Their lips met in a passionate kiss of affirmation and love. When Julie could breathe again, she whispered, seductively. "Make love to me, Max. Take me to bed and show me how much you care."

  He stiffened and pushed her from him. "You should get a clearance from Doctor Weatherby first."

  "I have," she assure
d him. "I borrowed Lupe's car and went to Burke's Crossing to see Doctor Weatherby yesterday morning."

  "Why did you go behind my back?" That old hurt tone had crept back into his voice.

  The hurt she saw in his eyes made her cry out in pain. "Because I was still running, still afraid, but I'm not afraid anymore. With tears streaming down her face Julie found the strength to say the words she should have spoken long ago. "I'm so sorry now that I ever left you, that I was fool enough to divorce you, and most of all I'm sorry that I ever doubted you."

  Max swept her back into his arms. "Oh, Julie, darling, do you know how long I've waited to hear those words from you?" He held her so tightly that she found it difficult to breathe. "I knew you felt passion for me, but your emotions seemed so shallow compared to what I've always felt for you." He loosened his hold. "Even a second wedding ceremony couldn't elicit a commitment from you. The night we spent in Pleasanton after we'd exchanged vows was the worst twelve hours of my life. I was convinced I'd lost you forever."

  Julie pushed back and took a deep breath. "I was scared, Max, so afraid that if I ever admitted how much I loved you, even to myself, I could never call it back and I was afraid, too, that all you felt for me was fleeting desire."

  Max smiled as his lips brushed across Julie's burning cheek. "Desire? Yes! Fleeting? Never!" Scooping her into his arms, he marched toward the bedroom. "So, you want proof?"

  Her arms twined around his neck as she laid her head on his chest. She could hear the measured beating of his heart. "I want you!'

  Max came through the door and kicked it with his foot. It slammed shut.

  "Quiet," Julie warned. "Trey's asleep in his crib." Delicious warmth had begun to flow through her body. "We don't want to wake him."

  Max stopped beside Trey's crib and set Julie on her feet. The baby stirred and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Julie twined her hand through Max's fingers. I will remember this moment always, she thought dreamily as she laid her head on Max's shoulder. "I've never before known such perfect happiness."