by Rachel Lee
“But I can tell...something about me is making you uncomfortable.”
“Wrong.” One single word. A few seconds passed before he elaborated. “You’re not causing my problem. You may have made me aware, but you didn’t cause this. I’m trying to figure out how to relate to a world I haven’t been part of since I was a kid. Change is always uncomfortable, but maybe it’s time I made a few. Haven’t decided what yet, but there it is. I’m shedding a skin, I guess...growing, I hope. But I’m not sure of much right now.”
“You don’t need to do this.”
His black eyes bored into her. “Actually, I think I do.”
His gaze made her heart speed up. Almost as if he reached out physically and touched her, she felt desire begin to drizzle through her entire body, hot and exciting. “Is that what you decided while you were out?” She hoped she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt.
“Not exactly. Let’s just say I accepted it. Something about walking into that bar. Déjà vu all over again, as they say. I’d been there before, too many times, all over the world. The threat creeping up my neck as eyes fixed on me. My entire body crawling with adrenaline as I waited for it to happen. I’m tired of it.”
Well, that was one amazing statement, she thought as she studied him. Tired of it? But it was his life. She’d thought Johnny was making a huge change when he moved out of the army to the State Department, but apparently not. Not considering that he had been killed. Not considering what Ryker had just said. Did the State Department put people in harm’s way as if they were soldiers? Or were there just some jobs... She stopped herself. She’d never know. That had been made abundantly clear to her. Ask as she might, no one would tell her exactly what had happened, what Johnny had been doing. No street mugging, of that she was certain, but what if he’d been doing something decidedly more dangerous? What if all he’d done was find another way to live on the edge he loved?
She sighed, twisted her fingers together and looked at them. Somehow she just had to let go of all that. No amount of knowledge would ease the loss. “What would you do?” she asked suddenly.
“What?” He sounded surprised, as if his mind had moved on.
“If you left your current job?”
“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “I have a lot of skills that are useless in the civilian world. Well, mostly useless. Occasionally I’ve toyed with running a survival school or becoming a hunting guide. What I couldn’t do is plant myself behind a desk.”
In that instant, a light of understanding flared in Marisa’s mind. No desk job. State Department? He said he’d run security. Wouldn’t that mostly be a desk job? What the hell had Johnny been doing? Because all of a sudden, her imaginings evaporated, and she knew with certainty that Johnny hadn’t taken a desk job, either. He hadn’t been sitting in some cozy little embassy or consulate somewhere doing routine translations. That wouldn’t have suited him at all.
“Ryker? Johnny didn’t have a desk job, did he?”
His gaze grew hollow, but he didn’t answer.
“What the hell was he doing?”
“I know exactly what they told you. Not one thing more.”
“But you know more about the kind of work.” Angry now, she struggled to her feet and began pacing. “Everyone’s lying to me. Everyone, and that includes Johnny. My God, I can’t believe he let me ramble on with all my excited imaginings about the exotic places we could visit with the State Department! He knew I’d never go with him, didn’t he? Didn’t he, Ryker?” She faced him.
He just shook his head. “I don’t know what he thought.”
“But you know what he did. And that didn’t include bringing a family.”
“Actually,” he said, rising, “I don’t know what he was doing. I can’t even find out!”
She glared at him, then turned her back on him, accepting that in this, at least, he was telling the truth. “Secrets,” she said bitterly. “So many secrets. Did I even know my own husband?”
She felt his hand grip her shoulder gently. She half wanted to shake free and half wanted to turn into his arms.
“You knew the man he was when he was with you,” he said quietly. “That’s the only part that matters.”
“Really? How many lies did he tell me?”
His grip tightened a bit. “I know he loved you. So he never lied to you about that or about your relationship.”
“But he never told me anything about what he did, and now I’ll never know, and that was such a big part of his life. Now there’s you, the same secrets, only you’re sweating them. Wanting to change. Johnny never wanted to change.”
He turned her then, wrapping his powerful arms around her, holding her close. Clearly he had no answer for her, but right at that moment she was simply grateful to have someone holding her, because inside she felt herself shattering into a million pieces. Who had she been married to?
His chest rumbled beneath her ear as he spoke. “He was a good man, Marisa. He loved you. A little reckless, maybe, but a good man. I’m sorry I can’t tell you any more. I warned you from the beginning, there are operational secrets. Johnny told you that, too. I don’t know what Johnny was doing or what his mission was when he died.”
But her mind was already straying in a different direction. God, it had been so long since she’d been held like this, comforted like this. Not even knowing that Ryker was just another man full of secrets could change the way he was making her feel: cared for, protected, supported. She’d been alone and lonely for way too long.
She was also pregnant, and before long, leaning into him was making her lower back ache. She didn’t want to pull away, but as the ache grew, she knew she had to.
It was almost as if he read her mind. He let go of her, gently eased her back onto the couch, then sat beside her, lifting her legs so his lap cradled them.
“Comfortable?” he asked as she leaned back against the armrest.
“Thanks.” It was the best she could manage when she felt as if her insides had been shredded. When Johnny had been in the Rangers, she’d had some idea of what he was doing. He was a soldier, and he went on dangerous missions. When he’d joined the State Department, she’d apparently built castles in the air that had nothing whatsoever to do with reality. Living proof now held her legs in his lap.
With strong hands he began to knead her lower legs through her fleece pants. It felt so good she couldn’t have stopped him. Life seemed to be shattering and flying in a million directions, and from what he’d said, he was feeling much the same. What was going on here?
But she was growing awfully tired of unanswered and unanswerable questions.
“I’m sorry I don’t have your answers,” he said a while later.
“That’s not your fault, is it? I’m beginning to really get it.”
“In what way?” His hands continued their soothing motions.
“You don’t know a whole lot more than I do. Oh, you know what you were doing but little else.”
He didn’t answer immediately, then remarked, “We call it compartmentalizing. Need to know. Each little part is separate from all the other parts.”
That was probably the single most revealing thing he’d told her. “So you operate in the dark, too?”
“Much of the time. I know only what I need to.”
“Does that seem right to you?”
He turned, his dark eyes catching hers. “It used to.”
An interesting choice of phrase. She seized on it, hoping she wouldn’t regret pressing him. “And now?”
“Now?” He looked away, still massaging her legs. “I don’t know. Maybe there are too many widows like you who don’t know the very things they should have a right to know. I couldn’t tell you.”
“Because you don’t know.”
“Exactly.” His hands p
aused, then resumed the massage. “It’s part of what I’ve been thinking about, Marisa. I’ve lived most of my life in the shadows. Do I want to live the rest of it that way? Maybe die in the shadows the way John did? I don’t know anymore. And maybe that’s why John sent me here.”
“What do you mean? You said he loved his work.”
“He did. But maybe, like me, he was starting to have second thoughts. I don’t know. Maybe he sensed I was having them. Maybe he just wanted me to stop and think about all I was missing. I couldn’t read his mind then, and I sure as hell can’t read it now. Regardless, he only asked me to check on you if something happened to him. He couldn’t have known it would, so all the rest is just speculation and probably had nothing to do with it.”
But she sensed a change in him, a slight stiffening. She ran his words back through her mind and then said, her voice taut, her chest so tight she could scarcely force the words out, “He knew.”
His head turned sharply. “Knew?”
“Knew he was going to die.”
“Marisa...”
“I had a friend in high school. They were on a trip. She told her mother if she didn’t go home immediately, she’d never go home again. The next day she drowned.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Sometimes people know,” she whispered.
When Ryker didn’t argue with her, she opened her eyes again. “You know it, too, don’t you? That some people seem to know before...”
“I’ve seen it,” he admitted. “Not often, but I’ve seen it.”
“So when, exactly, did John make you promise to check on me?”
His voice was heavy when he answered. “Right after I got him the job.”
Marisa turned her head, looking out the window at the falling snow. The winter night had fully settled in, and the flakes glistened in the light from the street lamp and windows. She felt as if snow was falling inside her, too, frigid and cold. But like the flakes outside, the flakes inside were ephemeral, beautiful at first blush, but doomed to vanish at the first warmth.
She was thawing, she realized. She’d been frozen ever since she’d learned of Johnny’s death. Now all her pretty little dreams and thoughts were melting, going the way those snowflakes would go eventually. Fleeting. Impermanent.
Her baby stirred, and she pressed her hands to the mound of her tummy. That was real, but was anything else? Her baby. All she had left of a marriage that had apparently been like a snowfall.
Ryker’s hands paused on her legs. “Marisa?”
When she didn’t answer, he moved. With astonishing ease, ungainly though she felt right then, he twisted and lifted her until he could settle her sideways on his lap. He wrapped both arms around her and just held her.
“I guess I was the wrong guy to send,” he said finally.
“Why?”
“Because we’re both messed up. I’m no help at all.”
She thought about that, about the awakening happening inside her, about the baby that had just decided to become rambunctious, so much so that, without asking, Ryker loosened one of his arms and rested his hand on her belly.
“Hello, Jonni,” he murmured.
She looked down at his big hand pressed gently to her stomach. Life. Maybe most of it was ephemeral but not the little girl growing inside her.
With her head resting on Ryker’s shoulder, she thought about the last time she’d seen Johnny. He’d been home for just over two months. When he’d kissed her goodbye and sworn he’d miss her every moment, she hadn’t missed the excitement dancing in his gaze. He was glad to be off again. Going on another dangerous adventure. Unaware of the child he was leaving behind.
“Johnny,” she said slowly, “never settled down. Never. He never would. If he hadn’t died...” Her voice caught, then steadied. “He wouldn’t have been home for this,” she said. “He wouldn’t have. I’d have gone through this entire pregnancy alone. Just the way I have. Until you arrived.”
“Marisa...”
“That’s why he sent you. At some level he knew he wouldn’t be here when I needed him most.”
She felt Ryker shake his head, but she knew it in the depths of her being. It was true. The baby was Johnny’s legacy, but Ryker was his last gift. She didn’t know what to make of that.
“He was doing important work,” Ryker offered.
“I’m sure. I never doubted that. But he lived to exist on the edge, Ryker. I knew that, too. What about you? Do you need to be on the edge all the time?”
He blew a long breath. “I think I just told you that’s changing.”
“Yes, you did. But for how long? How real is it?”
He gently rubbed his hand over her belly. “As real as this child. My gut’s saying so.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “I told you that, too. I just know I’ve enjoyed hanging around this town for the last month. I thought I’d be bored, but I haven’t been. Nice folks for the most part. I walk down the street without having to be on high alert. People are starting to greet me. I’ve had some casual conversations where I didn’t have to guard every word. It’s been like letting go of a suffocating weight.”
Her heart hurt as realization sank in. “I feel like I’m waking up from a bad dream that went on forever.” Her eyes burned, and she felt one tear roll down her cheek. “I spent most of my marriage missing Johnny. I can’t do that again.”
“No one’s asking you to.”
“I know. It’s just...I wonder at myself. Why my perspective is changing so much. I thought I’d accepted the way things had to be. Not so much, I guess. I might have lived an illusion for years. But one thing I know for sure now...I loved him. Part of me will always love him, but I cannot do that again. I have a child to think of now, to care for. I need some permanence and stability. Johnny never would have provided that. So it’s time to leave all that in the past. Time to look forward and plan. High time.”
Ryker lifted his hand and with a finger wiped away the one tear. “Don’t give him up, Marisa. He loved you. Keep that part of him.”
“I’ll never lose that.” She closed her eyes, dropped her head and placed her hand over Ryker’s. “Nothing can take it away from me. But I’m through railing at the universe and hating life and all the rest of it. Johnny was a bright and beautiful addition to my life. But he wasn’t all of it.” He hadn’t been around enough to be all of it.
She lifted a hand and laid it on Ryker’s chest. Through the flannel of his shirt she could feel heat and hard muscle. Reality.
“No one person,” he said slowly, “should be all of someone’s life.”
“Probably not. I don’t mean it as a criticism of Johnny. Like I said, I knew what it would be like. I’m just looking at myself and wondering how much longer I’m going to wallow in missing him. It seems almost like copping out.”
“To hell with that,” he said sharply. “The man you loved died. Whether he was around much before that hardly matters. This time he’s not coming back. A bit weird, don’t you think, to dismiss your grief because he wasn’t around often? There’s a huge difference between temporary and permanent.”
And therein resided a huge kernel of truth. Johnny would never come home, and she grieved for that. She grieved because she could no longer look forward to those amazing, bright spots of love that had filled her days when he was here. She had every right to miss him.
But it was dawning on her that she had every right to move on.
Chapter Eight
“It’s almost Christmas,” Ryker remarked the next morning as they sat over coffee and the eggs he’d made for them.
“So?”
He glanced out the window at falling snow, then at her. “What did you do for Thanksgiving?”
“Stayed home.”
He arched a b
row. “Really? I’m surprised. All those friends threw you a baby shower.”
“And all those friends asked me to join them for Thanksgiving. I said no.”
He studied her, drumming his fingers. “How come?”
“Do you really think I wanted to be surrounded by all their families and friends?”
Ryker studied her, beginning to understand something. He wondered if she had any idea how cute she looked with her hair still tousled from bed, wrapped in a pink terry-cloth robe over what appeared to be thermal underwear. Or how bright her almost-lavender eyes looked? Appealing in every way. “Explain,” he suggested gently.
“I would have just felt more alone. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
She sounded a bit querulous now. He felt one corner of his mouth twitch upward. She was definitely shaking free of the paralysis that had been plaguing her when he arrived. Good. Time to tiptoe, though. He was aware that he felt uniquely exposed here, as if his long-protected and buried feelings were now running around out in the world and vulnerable. She was probably feeling the same.
“What did you do for Thanksgiving?” she demanded.
“Called my parents. And Maude makes a mean turkey dinner.”
“Hah,” she said. “Another loner.” Then, “Why didn’t you go visit your parents?”
“They don’t expect me anymore, and...” Did he really want to tell her this? “Frankly, I don’t feel comfortable with them. It would have been three or four days of being badgered about the way I live.”
Marisa concerned him more. She was truly out of sorts this morning, maybe not surprising, given the thoughts she’d expressed last night, but he had no idea how to soothe her. Damn, he was getting too involved here. Why should he care that she was having a mood? Why should he feel he needed to do something about it? But he did. He just had to feel his way into it. He poured himself another coffee and returned to the table, pondering.
He asked, “Was John home last Christmas?”
“No. He came in February.”
“Well, I wasn’t home last Christmas either, just like Thanksgiving. In fact, it’s been years since I was anywhere near Christmas.”