The Bravo Family Way
Page 18
Her sweet mouth quivered. “Oh, Fletcher…”
And with a soft cry she was running toward him. She launched herself into his arms.
And he caught her, caught the slim, solid weight of her. He held her hard and close, buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair, whispered, “Cleo, I love you. Always. I do….”
“Oh, yes. I know. I love you, too.”
He let her go—but only long enough to cup her glowing face in his cherishing hands. He kissed her.
It was heaven, that kiss.
His own heaven. Right here on earth.
When he lifted his mouth from hers, she smiled at him. A smile that made the morning all the brighter.
He said, “I went to Danny Pope’s.”
She frowned. “When?”
“Just now. I thought maybe…” He couldn’t quite say it.
And then he found he didn’t need to. Because she understood. “Oh, Fletcher. No. I would never do something like that. Never go to another man. Not in this life or the next. I love you and I belong with you.”
He nodded. “I should have known. I did know. It’s only…” He couldn’t say the word.
So she said it for him. “Belinda.” He hung his head. She touched his face, urged him to look at her. When he did, she said, “Belinda betrayed you, didn’t she?”
He swallowed. “Yeah. Often. With a lot of different men.”
She touched his face. “Oh, my darling. I’m so sorry….”
He turned his head enough to brush a kiss in the heart of her palm. Then he caught her hand. “I have more to say.”
“Oh, I’m so glad.”
She let him lead her down the hall, to the master suite. Once inside, he shut the door. They took seats on the sofa in the sitting area.
Holding tightly to her soft hand, he confessed, “Belinda was always fragile emotionally. She needed so much attention. And I was busy working. At first, there were scenes. She’d cry and complain that I never had time for her. Then she started sleeping around—one-night stands, all of them, as far as I know. The first few times she went to bed with other men, she threw the news in my face. We fought. We made up. I…couldn’t leave her. I felt responsible for her.”
“Well, of course you did. That’s how you are. She was your wife and that made her family and that meant you had to stick by her.”
He felt the wry smile as it pulled at his mouth. “Got me all figured out, huh?”
“Well, I’m working on it.”
“Never stop.” He kissed her hand again.
“I don’t intend to—and please, tell me the rest.”
“Yeah.” His throat clutched up on him again. He swallowed. And he went on, “After the first time she hooked up with someone else, I…well, I didn’t leave her. But I couldn’t touch her. And that only made her worse.”
Cleo was nodding. “There were a few things Deanna said last Saturday, about how Belinda was so demanding, how she would stay out all night….”
“Yeah. I think Deanna and Jim might have known about her, about her thing for picking up strangers— at least, they might have known subconsciously. But they never talked about it. And it seemed so wrong to bring it up to them, to tell them that their daughter was pretty much screwing anything that moved. I didn’t say a word to them. And Belinda and I drifted further and further apart. Now and then we’d try to reconcile, to make it work between us. I even slept with her once, near the end. I was depressed. I’d had a few whiskies. The plain truth is, I wanted to get laid. I wanted it bad.”
Cleo’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “You were true to her, though she wasn’t to you.”
He smiled again, even more ruefully than before. “You make me sound so damn noble.”
“Well, you were.”
“Uh-uh. Not noble. Stubborn. Determined not to be like my bad daddy, determined to honor my wedding vows no matter what. Set on proving I wasn’t in any way a chip off the old block. That’s all.”
Cleo sat back from him then. He saw in those soft eyes that she was putting it together. She brought a hand to her mouth, her eyes going wide. “Ashlyn,” she said on a breath.
“Yeah.”
“She’s not…?”
“I don’t know. She could be mine. There was that one time, and it was the right time for me to be Ashlyn’s father. But Belinda said no. She threw it in my face the night she asked for a divorce. She screamed at me that the baby she was carrying wasn’t mine. She said there had been a lot of men—so many, in fact, that she had no idea herself who the baby’s father was.”
“And that did it. You gave her what she wanted. A divorce, full custody…”
“That’s right. And if she hadn’t died suddenly, I would have never set eyes on Ashlyn. I would have sent the checks for her support and stayed the hell away from her. But then Belinda did die. And Deanna called me. And, well…I’ve always liked Deanna and Jim. I went back there, to Bridgewater, for their sakes. And I met Ashlyn. I’ll never forget my first sight of her. She was wearing a pretty blue dress, sitting on the sofa in Deanna’s living room. She looked up when I came in. Damn. Those incredible serious eyes of hers. She asked, ‘Are you my daddy?’ Hell. What else could I say?”
“Oh, Fletcher. Only what you did say. Yes.”
The tears were trailing down her soft cheeks by then. He grabbed a tissue from the box on the low table beside them and handed it to her. She blew her nose and dried her eyes.
He said, “I’ve never told anyone else but you. And I never will. But I still don’t know for sure if she’s mine— if she’s not. I had Klimas look into it without explaining why. He couldn’t find any guy Belinda saw regularly. And yeah, I know there’s the option of a paternity test. That would settle it. I’d know for certain.”
She sniffed. “Oh, no…”
“Oh, no what?”
She tossed the tissue on the table and grabbed his hand again. “Listen. Are you listening?”
Even with a red nose and puffy eyes she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “Yeah. I hear you. Every word.”
“Good. Because there’s no need for any test. You are Ashlyn’s father. In all the ways that matter, she is and always will be your daughter. And for now, well, there’s not another thing to be done on that issue. Except to love her and take care of her.”
“But maybe someday she’ll—”
“Shhh.” She leaned close, kissed him lightly into silence. “Listen to what you just said. Someday. Let’s deal with someday when it comes along. For right now, you’re all the father that little girl needs.”
He tightened his hold on her hand. “There’s more.”
She squeezed back. “Tell me. Everything.”
“Remember the morning I asked you to marry me?”
“How could I ever forget?”
“I didn’t know, didn’t realize until that morning, when you asked if I loved you and I said I did…I didn’t know until I said the words that they were true. I loved you completely and I knew that I always would.”
She almost smiled. “And that’s a problem?”
“Yeah. For me, it was. Until then, I’d been telling myself that my decision to make you my wife was purely practical—and sexual. You were great with Ashlyn. She adored you. You knew my world, had lived in it. You understood how things work. Plus, I couldn’t keep my hands off your gorgeous body. I told myself it was perfect. Not love, just an excellent match. But then you asked me if I loved you. I said I did—and it hit me. A knockout punch. I was telling the truth. I did love you. I wanted to marry you because I wanted to be with you for the rest of my life, and all my other trumped-up reasons were just so much crap. That scared me. You have no damn idea how much. I’ve been running from that—from how much I love you—ever since then.”
“Oh, Fletcher…”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to run anymore.”
“Good. The bald truth is, running’s just not working. No matter how damn hard I t
ry, I can’t escape the fact that I’m even more scared of losing you than I am of the power in what I feel for you. So if you’ll give me a chance, I’ll…work with it. I’ll learn to accept that I’m hopelessly yours.”
She laughed then. “Fletcher, you make it sound like a death sentence.”
“No. A life sentence. That’s what it is. You. Me. Forever…you think?”
“I don’t think. I know.”
“Good,” he said, drawing her closer.
She sighed and pressed up against him, soft and so willing. He kissed her, a long, sweet kiss, a kiss as deep as his love for her.
When he lifted his head, it was only to settle her into the crook of his arm. For a moment they were quiet, sitting there on the sofa in the morning light. Together.
Then shyly she took his hand again and pressed it to her flat belly. “I’ve been keeping a secret, too.” She tipped her head back, her gaze seeking his.
He dared to guess. “A baby?”
Her eyes were shining. “Yes.”
And with that, at last, all the secrets had been told. He rose from the sofa and took her to their bed. They undressed each other slowly by the light of the morning sun.
And when he guided her down onto the pillows, he whispered, “I love you.”
“And I love you.”
“Forever.”
She lifted her slim arms to pull him close. “Oh, absolutely. Forever and always. I wouldn’t settle for anything less.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6226-7
THE BRAVO FAMILY WAY
Copyright © 2006 by Christine Rimmer
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