by Rachel Lee
“Intentions are meaningless. Actions count. She’s not one to bark and snarl, but I am.”
Again he nodded. “Thing is, she makes her own decisions. What worries me is that you made her hurt.”
“Yeah.” Julie blew a sigh, a white cloud. “I didn’t mean it that way. I really didn’t. I know she’s attracted to you. I was kind of trying to give her a blessing, so she wouldn’t feel guilty about it. But on the other hand... No more Johnnys.”
This time he let her go. She hadn’t said one thing he didn’t already know. Whatever he did, whatever Marisa chose, he had to ensure he didn’t put her back where she’d been.
The question was, could he change? Because he definitely didn’t want to make Marisa change. Or maybe the better question was simply whether he should just clear out of here after the baby came. She’d have plenty of girlfriends to help her out, women who knew a helluva lot more about babies than he.
As he was combining ingredients for a pot roast, he suddenly froze and wondered why the hell he was even thinking of such things. Soon he’d hit the road again, go back to his life and leave Marisa behind in hers.
Some questions didn’t need answers. In fact, they shouldn’t even be asked.
* * *
Marisa’s nap revived her. She awoke to a house full of delicious aromas, then suddenly remembered she had fallen asleep with Ryker holding her. Okay, the guy could be sweet. Even understanding. But he was still a box full of secrets, and really, she’d had enough of that. Julie could say whatever she wanted about a fling being okay, but Marisa wasn’t buying it.
She wasn’t the “fling” type. Johnny had been her one and only, and with her looming responsibilities to a child, she’d be a fool to change that.
Rising, she freshened up, then headed toward the front of the house to find out what was going on. Ryker was sitting on the couch, reading a book. He looked up and smiled.
“Feeling better?”
“Much. I don’t know what got into Julie.”
He put the book aside. “I do. She came by while you were sleeping. Apparently, she was trying to tell you to seize the day and then realized later that you might have taken it wrong. She also had a message for me.”
Marisa slowly perched on the other end of the couch. “What is she doing messing in my life like this?”
“Being a friend,” he said truthfully.
“So, what was her message for you?”
“That I’ll be drawn and quartered if I harm a hair on your head.”
At first Marisa gasped, then a laugh spilled out of her. The baby stirred, kicking hard. “She’d never have said such a thing.”
“Not exactly in those words.”
Marisa laid a hand over her stomach, feeling the pokes and prods. Nobody had shared this with her. Nobody. And all of a sudden she had a crying need to share it with someone.
“Come here,” she said. “Just scoot closer.”
His gaze narrowed a bit, but he did as asked. Then she took his large hand and pressed it to her belly. “Just feel her.”
He drew a breath. “Wow,” he murmured.
“Wait. Sometimes it feels like she’s turning over in there.”
He closed his eyes, waiting as she had asked. “Such life,” he said quietly. “So much life.”
His eyes opened and met hers squarely. She felt electricity zap between them, as if she’d just been connected to a battery. Then every cell in her began to hum with desire. She wanted this man. He might be trouble, but she wanted him, anyway.
Not good, she reminded herself. Ryker would soon leave. He had a job to get back to, a whole life buried in the secrets he and Johnny couldn’t share with her. But for now...for now she needed someone to share her joy in this growing baby. Put everything else on the back burner, just savor this moment, a moment she should have been sharing with her husband. Sharing it with his friend at least assuaged some of her need.
“What do I smell cooking?” she asked eventually.
“Pot roast. I hope it’s not too salty.”
“I’ll drink a lot of water.”
He removed his hand, then clasped hers. “Marisa? That was special. Thanks for sharing with me.”
“Well, I can’t share it with Johnny.” She meant to say it lightly, but it came out sounding rather different.
Ryker stood up. “I’m not Johnny.” He was halfway to the kitchen when he called back, “You want water or something?”
“I’ll get it.” She sat there feeling almost stunned. The way he had said I’m not Johnny. It had sounded angry. Maybe bitter. What the hell was going on now?
She waited a while, trying to compose herself, running her palms over her tummy in a soothing motion that probably did more for her than her baby. Eventually, however, she needed a drink and had to venture into the kitchen, where Ryker seemed to have ensconced himself.
He was seated at the table, staring out the window at the wintry day. Snowflakes had begun to fall, and she wondered vaguely how much accumulation they’d get.
She went to the refrigerator for a glass of orange juice, then paused. “Dinner smells really good,” she offered.
“Thanks.”
Okay, this wasn’t working. “What did Julie say to you exactly?”
“Only the truth,” he said grudgingly.
“Which was?”
“That you don’t need another Johnny.”
Marisa caught her breath and felt her heart slam. “She had no right...”
“She’s your friend. She’s concerned about you. She has every right.”
She pulled out a chair and sat facing him. Standing too long these days made her back ache a bit. “You’d think the back muscles would keep up with the pregnancy,” she remarked.
That drew his attention toward her.
“Meaning?”
“Apparently, they don’t. I can’t stand for long now without my back aching. It’s mostly mild, but why flirt with a bigger problem?”
“Oh.” He drummed his fingers lightly. “I’m sorry if I upset you more.”
“You didn’t upset me, you confused me and made me wonder what Julie said to you. I know you’re not Johnny.”
“I didn’t quite mean it that way.” But maybe he meant it in the most important ways. “I told you I want you. I know you want me. That’s ordinary human interaction. Feeling desire is normal. We all do. What concerns me is... I don’t want to do anything that might hurt you. However accidentally. From the way Julie tells it, you’re finally emerging from your cocoon. I’d like to help with that, not drive you back into it.”
Marisa nodded slowly, running her finger along the side of her orange juice glass, collecting condensation. The ache was returning, and this time it wasn’t sexual. She felt as if another loss hovered right around the corner. “Are you telling me you’re not trustworthy?”
“Depends,” he answered shortly.
“On what?”
“Whether I can provide what’s needed.” His face darkened, and she thought he looked almost frightening. “Tell me to take a hike and I’ll expend my last drop of blood to do it. But this...you... You need things I’ve never had to provide. Never even tried to provide.”
“Sheesh, Ryker, what does it matter? You don’t know what I need, and I’m not asking you for anything, anyway.” Her heart was racing now, feeling something important was going on, but danged if she knew what. This guy had barely entered her life. Whether she wanted him sexually was irrelevant. They didn’t exactly have a relationship for him to be worrying about.
“It matters,” he said. “Because I’m not going to turn you into a casual conquest. You deserve better. And whether or not you want it from me, I still need to know if I can give it. So forget casual. Forget a fling. It ain’t gonna happen. I car
e too much.” He shook his head as if to shake something loose. “I care too much,” he repeated quietly. “And that’s the hell of it. Never did that before, either.”
He stood up. “Another hour or so on the slow cooker. I’m going out.”
She looked up at him. “Will you be back?”
“Hell if I know.”
Then he was gone, leaving her alone in the silent, empty house, the only trace of him the aromas from the slow cooker. What had just happened?
She pushed her orange juice to one side and put her head down the table. Hot tears burned in her eyes and fell on her hands.
She cared, too. I’m so sorry, Johnny, she thought. I didn’t want to betray you. It hadn’t even been a year. Not even a year, and already she was somehow crazily tangled up with another man. And it was crazy. Ryker? Who the hell was Ryker? Would she ever know? Did it matter?
She gave in to the tears, just let herself sob them all out. She’d been safer in her cocoon of grief, but somehow Ryker had yanked her out of it, making life all too close again. No muffling between her and it. She was smack-dab back in all the confusion, pain and upset of being alive.
And this time it wasn’t grief.
Chapter Seven
Ryker drove for hours along back country roads, feeling as if a Pandora’s box had been opened inside him. All the soul-searching he’d failed to do over the years, all the decisions he’d made or had refused to make, the truncated personality he’d become...they all leaped out and screamed at him like unleashed Furies.
Why the hell had John Hayes asked this of him? More than anyone else on the planet, John had to have been aware of Ryker’s lacks. His narrow set of emotions. The secrets that would always stand between him and anyone else.
“What were you thinking, John?” But of course there was no answer. Of all the people John could have asked to check on his wife if anything happened, there were a million better choices than Ryker.
John had chosen to lay this on Ryker, and now that the baby was imminent, Ryker knew he couldn’t leave. Not yet. But that was no excuse for what John had caused here, because John hadn’t known about the kid.
Or maybe John had been just that selfish. Maybe he hadn’t understood Ryker at all. After all, his friend was the one who’d kept leaving a wife behind time and again to go on dangerous missions until he got himself killed. The guy who wouldn’t leave the Rangers until he got himself a dangerous covert job with the CIA.
Ryker could hardly hold himself blameless, though. He hadn’t had to get John that job. He could have told the guy to go home and settle down. But, maybe just like John, he hadn’t given any thought to Marisa. She wasn’t his wife. What did it matter to him?
Oh, hell, it mattered. It mattered in ways he wasn’t used to and didn’t know how to handle. Or even sort out.
What did John think Ryker would do? Pull into town, make a little recon, find out if Marisa needed anything, then head out again?
Cussing, Ryker turned into the parking lot of a roadhouse and slammed the car into Park. Maybe that was the Ryker John thought he knew. A man who could come here and leave everything untouched. Leave Marisa in her misery. Barely touch the edges of her consciousness. A gesture, nothing more. A way to speak from beyond the grave and remind this woman he’d loved her.
Well, it hadn’t worked that way, had it? What’s more, he was beginning to agree with Julie’s unspoken assessment of John. Selfish and always walking out the door.
The ugliest thought popped into his head. John had known Ryker wouldn’t be able to make it until months after the funeral. Maybe this had been John’s way of keeping her grief fresh, of keeping her to himself, because he knew Ryker’s rule on women.
Could that man have really been so ugly inside?
It was possible, much as he hated to believe it. But he knew as well how much the kind of life they led could breed ugliness in some. And how possessive some men could be.
He cussed again and switched off the car, heading inside to get a beer. Just one, because he had to get back to that house to look after Marisa. John’s other legacy. One that was probably turning out very differently than John had expected.
Ryker tried to shake the thought away. Maybe John had been trying to make a point to Ryker. It was possible. He’d often tried to persuade Ryker that marriage was a good thing.
Ryker was having none of it. And after seeing what it had cost Marisa, he was having even less of it.
He’d have to change himself in ways he could scarcely imagine before he would feel right about sharing his life with a woman.
And that was that.
* * *
Ryker was gone so long that Marisa finally helped herself to a small bowl of pot roast, then went into the living room to watch whatever was on TV. She loved to read, but lately reading put her quickly to sleep, and she didn’t want to sleep. Not again and not yet.
She found a sitcom rerun and left it on for some background noise. When she glanced out the window, she saw that it was snowing again, a little harder than earlier. She hoped Ryker was safe on the roads.
With her hands resting on her tummy, feeling the occasional movements of her child, she tried to parse through what had happened that day.
First, Julie had encouraged her to have an affair. Then, she’d apparently come over here to warn Ryker off. Why?
And what had put Ryker in such a turmoil? Why should he be worrying about whether he could provide what she needed? He was just passing through. A friend of Johnny’s performing a duty.
That was it, and the sexual attraction that had flared between them didn’t change any of that.
Regardless, she got the feeling that something was tearing Ryker apart, and she couldn’t imagine what or why. It certainly couldn’t be her. He’d been up front with her about his casual approach to women. Love ’em and leave ’em, he’d said. Very uncomplicated.
She wondered if she could handle that kind of uncomplicated, or if it would somehow become complicated for her. She had no way to know.
She did realize that she was feeling badly for Ryker, though. She sensed that Johnny had somehow put him in an untenable situation. Should she try to get him to talk honestly about it, or was it better just to leave it alone?
But one thing she knew for sure—the clear-eyed, decisive man who had arrived here had vanished. Troubles lurked in his gaze the way they had in hers for so long. Troubles like that didn’t go away overnight, as she ought to know.
Emerging from her grief was proving painful in its own way, and she wondered if Ryker was experiencing something like that. He’d been Johnny’s friend, after all.
Speculating wasn’t at all helpful, though. Not at all. She’d thought Ryker was a man full of secrets, like Johnny, and he was. But different from Johnny. Johnny had mostly seemed untroubled. Ryker was striking her as a man who was being ripped apart from the inside by something.
At long last she heard him come back.
“I’m in the living room,” she called. Lying on the couch with her feet up. She reached for the remote and turned off the TV, hoping he’d join her. She was done with solitude, she realized.
“Hi,” he said. “How was dinner?”
“Fabulous. Get yourself some.” She turned her head just a little, catching only a glimpse of him in the doorway.
“I wanted to put your laundry away, but you have to tell me where.”
“Later. It can wait. You folded it so neatly it seems a shame to disturb it. Eat something.”
Five minutes later he returned with his dinner in a bowl. He took the rocker across from her and started eating. “You’ve been okay?”
She snorted. “It may surprise the world, but I’ve been breathing successfully on my own for over thirty-two years.”
He flashed a grin at her, then
resumed eating. Between mouthfuls, he spoke. “I’ve been driving around. Beautiful country here.”
“I got a little worried when I saw the snow was growing heavier.”
“The roads are getting slick,” he agreed. “There is, however, a roadhouse that I’d advise you to avoid if you should ever get the urge.”
She pushed herself up against the arm of the couch. “Did something happen?”
“No, I didn’t let it happen. I stopped to get a beer, and you could say the atmosphere changed.”
She blinked. “But why?”
“Look at me, Marisa. I learned long ago that something about me seems to challenge other men. Not all of them, but some. So I drank half my beer, gave them my best killer look and got the hell out. Some help I’d be to you sitting in a cell for brawling in a bar.”
She put her hand to her mouth, afraid she might smile at the silliness. “Really?”
“Really. It happens. I don’t know what it is. Anyway, nothing occurred, so it’s unimportant.”
“Have you ever brawled?”
“Hell, yeah. Sometimes you can’t avoid it.”
She nodded slowly. “Johnny told me about one or two.”
“See? Put a little alcohol in some guys and they suddenly start looking for a place to plant their fists.”
“But not you?”
He looked up again. “I told you. I don’t have anything to prove.”
He resumed eating. She bit her lip, then decided to risk it.
“Why did Johnny ask you to check on me?”
He scraped the last bit from his bowl and set it aside. “I told you I don’t know. I’ve been wondering the same thing. Why?”
“Because you seem so uncomfortable.”
“Sometimes I am,” he admitted frankly. “I took care of my men, but that’s a whole different thing from looking after you. John knew that. He knew I had little to do with women, except casually. Call me stunted. I guess I am. So I don’t have a clue.”
“But this doesn’t seem fair to you.”
“Fair?” He arched a brow at her. “Really? You know fair doesn’t enter into it.”