“Oh-oh. He doesn’t want us making love.”
She gave a sad little grin and tugged at his beard. “Not that.”
“Then what?”
She took a deep breath. “He thought that it would be better if I stay close to a hospital from the middle of my pregnancy on.”
“‘Stay close.’ What does that mean?”
“It means live in the city. He gave me the name of a colleague of his, a man who left New York several years ago to head the obstetrics department at a hospital in Concord. John has total faith in him. He wants him to be in charge of the case.”
“I see,” Garrick said. He sank quietly back to the pillow and trained his gaze on the rafters. “How do you feel about it?”
Withdrawing her displaced hand, yet missing the contact, Leah said, “I want what’s best for the baby.”
“Do you want to move to the city?”
“Personally? No.”
“Then don’t.”
“It’s not as simple as that. My personal feelings come second to what’s best for this baby’s chances.”
“What, exactly, did your doctor think that his man in Concord would be able to do?”
“Perform certain tests, more sophisticated ones than a local doctor is equipped to do. Closely monitor the condition of the baby. Detect any potential problem before it proves fatal.”
Garrick had to admit, albeit begrudgingly, that that made sense. It was his baby, too. He didn’t want anything to go wrong. “Didn’t they do all that before?”
“Not as well as they can now. Nearly three years have passed. Medical science has advanced in that time.”
“Well,” he said, sighing, “we don’t have to make a decision on it now, do we?”
“Not right away, I suppose. But John suggested that I see his man soon. They’ll be in touch on the phone, and John will forward any records he thinks may be of help. Usually …” She hesitated, then pushed on. “Usually there’d be monthly appointments at this stage, but John wants me to be checked every two weeks.”
Garrick shut his eyes tight. “That means tackling Concord every two weeks.”
“Concord isn’t so bad.”
He said nothing.
“And besides, we’re getting into good weather. It’s not such a long drive.” But she knew that it wasn’t the drive, or the weather, or any conflicting time demand that was the problem. “Will you drive me down twice a month?” she asked. She could easily drive herself, but she desperately wanted Garrick to be with her.
He didn’t answer at first. In fact, he didn’t answer at all. Instead he rolled toward her and took her into his arms. She felt the pulsing steel of his strength, smelled the musky, wood scent that was his and his alone, and when their lips met, she tasted his fear and worry … and love.
GARRICK DID DRIVE HER to Concord twice a month, but he was tense the whole way, and the instant each appointment was done, he quickly tucked her into the car and drove her home. Only on familiar turf was he fully at ease, but even that ease ebbed somewhat as late spring became early summer.
Outwardly life was wonderful. They shed sweaters and long pants for T-shirts and shorts, and more often than not, when he worked in the clearing around the cabin, Garrick was bare chested. Leah could have spent entire days just watching him. Sweat poured freely from his body. The muscles of his upper back and arms rippled with the thrust of a shovel or the swing of an ax. His skin turned a rugged bronze, while the sandy hue of his hair lightened. He was positively gorgeous and she told him so, which, to her surprise and delight, brought a deeper shade of red to his cheeks.
He put in his garden and spent long hours cultivating it. During those times Leah sat near him, either watching, weaving, basking in the sun or working on puzzles. She was regularly shipping parcels off to New York, and the fact that there was now a phone at the cabin facilitated communications with her editor. The queasiness and fatigue that had initially slowed her down had passed by the end of June; come July, she was feeling fine and beginning to show.
They were as deeply in love as ever. Leah made a point of protesting when Garrick doted on her, but she drank in his attention and affection. In turn, she did whatever she could to make his days special, but she had a selfish motive, as well. The busier she was, the more dedicated to his happiness, the less she thought about the child growing inside her.
She didn’t want to think about it. She was frightened to pin hopes and dreams on something that might never be. In mid-July she underwent amniocentesis, and though she was relieved to learn that, at that point at least, the baby was healthy, she didn’t want to know its sex.
Neither did Garrick. There were times when he was working the soil or whittling or listening to Leah’s music when his mind would wander. At those odd moments he had mixed feelings about the baby. Oh, he wanted it; but he resented it, too, for in his gut he knew Leah was going to leave. She didn’t say so. They deliberately avoided discussion of what was to come in August, when she reached the midway point of her pregnancy. But he knew what she was thinking when her eyes lowered and her brow furrowed, and he dreaded the day when she’d finally broach the subject.
More than anything he would have liked to stop time. He’d have Leah. He’d have the baby thriving inside her. He’d have the bright summer sunshine, the good, rich earth, the endless bounty of the mountain. He didn’t want things to change; he liked them as they were. He felt safe and secure, productive and well loved.
But he couldn’t stop time. The heat of each day turned to the chill of evening. The sun set; darkness fell. The baby inside Leah grew until her abdomen was as round as the cabbage he’d planted in the garden. And when Leah approached him in the middle of August, he knew that his time of total satisfaction was over.
“We have to talk,” she said, sitting down beside him on the porch swing he’d hung. She’d gone inside for a sweater to ward off the cool night air; it was draped over the T-shirt—Garrick’s T-shirt—that covered the gentle bubble of her stomach.
“I know.”
“Dr. Walsh wants me closer to the hospital.”
He nodded.
“Will you come?”
Looking off toward the woods, Garrick took a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was gritty. “I can’t.”
“You can if you want.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is my home. I can’t live in the city again.”
“You can if you want.”
“No.”
“I’m not asking you to move there for good. It would be for four months at most. Dr. Walsh is planning to take the baby by section in the middle of December.”
Garrick swallowed. “I’ll be with you then.”
“But I want you with me now.”
He looked at her sharply. “I can’t, Leah. I just can’t.”
Leah was trying to be understanding, but she had little to work with. “Please. Tell me why.”
He bolted up from the swing, and in a single stride was leaning against the porch railing with his back to her. “There’s too much to do here. Fall is my busy time. Trapping season opens at the end of October. There’s a whole lot to do before then.”
“You could live with me part-time in Concord. It’d be better than nothing.”
“I don’t see why you have to live in Concord. I drive. The Cherokee is dependable. If there’s a problem, I could have you at the hospital in no time.”
“Garrick, it takes two hours to get there. Both times before, things went wrong after I’d gone into labor. Those two hours could be critical.”
“We have a phone. We could call an ambulance … or … or call for a police escort if there’s a need.”
“Ambulance attendants don’t have the know-how to handle problem deliveries. Neither do police.”
“Okay,” he said, turning to face her. “Then we can go to Concord in November. Why September?”
“Dr. Walsh wanted August, but I put
him off.”
“Put him off for another few months.”
Tugging the sweater closer around her, Leah studied the planked floor of the porch. “Do you want this baby, Garrick?”
“That’s a foolish question. You know I do.”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course!”
She looked up. “Then why can’t you do this for me—for the baby—for all three of us?”
With a low growl of frustration, he turned away again. “You don’t understand.”
“I think I do,” she cried, pushing off from the swing and coming up to where he stood. “I think you’re frightened—of people, of the city, of being recognized. But that’s ridiculous, Garrick! You’ve made a good life for yourself. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Wrong. I spent seventeen years of my life behaving like a jackass.”
“But you paid the price, and you’ve rebuilt your life. So what if someone recognizes you? Are you ashamed of who you are now?”
The pale light of the moon glittered off the flaring silver flecks in his eyes. “No!”
“Why can’t you go out there and hold your head high?”
“It’s got nothing to do with pride. What I have now is much finer than anything I had then. You’re much finer than any woman I knew then.”
“What is it, then? What is it that makes you nervous each and every time we approach civilization? I’ve seen it, Garrick. Your shoulders get tense. You keep your head down. You avoid making eye contact with strangers. You refuse to go into restaurants. You want to get out of wherever we are as quickly as possible.”
“It bothers you not going out on the town?”
“Of course not! What bothers me is that you’re uncomfortable. I love you. I’m proud of you. It hurts me to see you slinking around corners as though there’s—” she faltered, searching for an analogy “—as though there’s a trap set around the next one.”
“I know all about traps. Sometimes you don’t see them until you’re good and caught.”
“Then there’s the case of the coyote, who won’t be caught in the same place twice.”
“The coyote’s an animal. I’m human.”
“That’s right. You’re smart and fine and strong—”
“Strong? Not quite.” He turned to face her. The faint glow spilling from inside the cabin side-lit his features, adding to the harshness of his expression. “What I had for seventeen years was a disease, Leah. It was an addiction. And the one thing a former addict doesn’t do is to let the forbidden be waved before his nose. I won’t go into restaurants with bars because I’d have to walk by all those bottles to get to a seat. I won’t look people in the eye because if they were to recognize me I’d see their star lust. I don’t watch television. I don’t go to movies. And the last thing I wanted when you came here was heavy sex.” He snorted. “Guess I blew it on that one.”
“You don’t trust yourself,” she said, at last comprehending the extent of his fear.
“Damn right, I don’t. When you first showed up, I thought you were a reporter. I wanted to get rid of you as soon as possible, and you want to know why? If a reporter—especially a pretty one—were to interview me, I’d feel pretty important. And then I’d get to thinking that I’d done my penance for screwing up once, and maybe I should try for the big time again.”
“But you don’t want that anymore.”
“When I’m here I don’t. When I’m thinking rationally, I don’t. But I spent a good many years thinking irrationally. Who’s to say that I wouldn’t start doing it again?”
“You wouldn’t. Not after all you’ve been through.”
“That’s what I tell myself,” he said in a weary tone, “but it’s not a hundred percent convincing.” He thrust a handful of fingers through his hair, which fell back to his forehead anyway. “I don’t know how I’d react face to face with temptation.”
She slipped her hand under the sleeve of his T-shirt to his shoulder. “Don’t you think it’s time you tried? You can’t go through the rest of your life living under a shadow.” She gave him a little shake. “You’ve been happy here. You feel good about your life. Wouldn’t it be nice to prove to yourself, once and for all, that you have the strength that I know you have?”
“You love me. You see me through rose-colored glasses.”
Leah’s hand fell away as she tamped down a spurt of anger. “My glasses are untinted, thank you, and even if they weren’t, that’s a lousy thing to say. Yes, I love you. But I’ve been through love once before, and I’m a realist. I entered this relationship with my eyes wide open—”
“You’re nearsighted.”
“Not where feelings and emotions are concerned. Oh, I can see your faults. We all have them, Garrick. That’s what being human is about. But you took on your weaknesses once before and came out a winner. Why can’t you take on this last one?”
“Because I might fail, damn it! I might face temptation and succumb, and where would that leave me, or you, or the baby?”
“It won’t happen,” she declared quietly.
“Is that an ironclad guarantee?”
“Life doesn’t come with guarantees.”
“Right.”
“But you have so much more going for you now than you had before,” she argued. “You have the life you’ve made, and it’s one you love. And you have me. I wouldn’t sit idly back and watch you fall into a pattern of self-destruction. I don’t want that other life any more than you do. And I don’t want you hurt. I love you, Garrick. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
He bowed his head and, in the shadows, groped blindly for her hand. “It means more than you could ever imagine,” he said hoarsely, weaving his fingers through hers, holding them tightly.
“Come with me,” she pleaded. “I know it’s asking a lot, because it cuts into the trapping season, but you don’t need the money. You said so yourself. And these are extenuating circumstances. It won’t happen every year. It may never happen again.”
“God, Leah …”
“I need you.”
“Maybe you need something I don’t have to give.”
“But you’re a survivor. Look at what you’ve been through. It isn’t every man who can land in a canyon, half-broken in body and more than that in spirit, and rise again to be the kind of person who can—” again she floundered for words “—can take in a bedraggled mess of mud from your doorstep half suspecting that she was planning to stab you in the back with a poison pen story.”
He made a noise that, in other circumstances and with a stretch of the imagination, might have been a laugh. “You were a little pathetic.”
“The point is,” she went on, “that your heart’s in the right place. You want the best—for you, for me, for the baby. You can do anything you set your mind to. You can give anything you want.”
Closing his eyes, Garrick put a hand to the tense muscles at the back of his neck. He dropped his head to the side, then slowly eased it back and around. “Ahhh, Leah. You make it sound so simple. Perhaps I could do it if I had you by my side every minute, whispering in my ear like a Jiminy Cricket. But I can’t do that. I won’t. I need to stand on my own two feet. Here I can do it.”
“You asked me to marry you. Are you saying that we’d never take a vacation, never go somewhere different?”
“If it bores you to be here—”
“It doesn’t, and you know it! But everyone needs a change of scenery sometimes. Suppose, just suppose this baby lives—”
“It will live,” he barked.
“See, you can be optimistic, because you haven’t been through the hell I have once, let alone twice. But I’m willing to try again—”
“It happened. We didn’t plan it.”
“I could have had an abortion.”
“You’re not that kind of person.”
“Just as you’re not the kind of person who gave up on life when you came to in that hospital. You could have, y’know. You could have
gone right back to drinking and taking whatever else you were taking, but you didn’t. You were willing to make a stab at a new life. Some people wouldn’t have the courage to do that, but you did. All I’m asking now is that you take it one step further.” She gave a frustrated shake of her head. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that if the baby lives, and grows and gets more active and demanding, there may be times when I’ll want to go off with my husband somewhere, alone, just the two of us. Maybe to somewhere warm in winter, or somewhere cool in summer. Or maybe I’ll want to go somewhere adventurous—like Madrid or Peking or Cairo. It would have nothing to do with being bored here, or not loving our child, but simply a desire to learn about other things and places. Would you refuse?”
He was silent for a minute. “I haven’t thought that far.”
“Maybe you should.”
He eyed her levelly. “Before I mention marriage again?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you issuing an ultimatum, Leah?”
She turned her head aside in disgust. “An ultimatum? Me? I’ve used the word dozens of times in puzzles, but I wouldn’t know how to apply it in real life if I had to.” Removing her glasses, she rubbed the bridge of her nose. “No ultimatum,” she murmured. “Just something to think about, I guess.”
When she didn’t raise her head, Garrick did it for her. The tears that had gathered in her eyes wrenched his insides, but he said what he had to say. “I love you, Leah. That won’t change, whether you’re here or in Concord. But I can’t go with you. Not now. Not yet. There are still too many things I have to work out in my mind. I want to marry you, and that won’t change, either, but maybe it would be good if we were separated for a time. If you’re in Concord, under Walsh’s eye, I’ll know you’re well cared for. While you’re there, you’ll be able to think about whether I am the kind of man you want. Except for two days, we’ve been together constantly for nearly five months. If it were fifty months or years, I’d still feel the same about you. But you have to accept me for what I am. Baby or no baby, you have a right to happiness. If my shortcomings are going to prevent that down the road, then … maybe you should do some rethinking.”
Crossed Hearts (Matchmaker Trilogy) Page 16