“I believe he’s an inventor.”
“As well as a doctor, and verifier and restorer of antiquities? And a master of disguise? Because I swear without the beard and the glasses, he would be a different person.” She got to the top of the stairs and turned like a bobcat on the defensive. “Max, if you want, you can start down the mountain. You probably want to get back. I’ll rest for a couple of days and—”
“Really? After what’s happened?” He stood on the step below her, exactly her height, too close, breathing her oxygen, looking in her eyes. “You think that I would leave you to walk down alone? That’s what you think of me?”
“No, I just... I don’t know what we’re going to...” Frustrated, she burst out, “I wish I could remember more about us. I wish I could remember if we worked.”
“If we worked?”
“If we could have made it together.”
He smiled, a slow, wicked curl of amusement. “I can help with one aspect of whether we worked.” Without touching her with his hands, he tilted his head, leaned in and kissed her.
31
Some men considered kissing nothing but a preliminary to the main event.
Some men considered kissing a coin to be repaid at the time and place of their choosing.
This man kissed for the bliss of sharing breath, sharing touch, sharing pleasure. Max tasted Kellen as if she was a glorious feast to be savored, one flavor at a time. The kiss intensified until she cupped her hands around his neck, held him in place and took control.
Then he climbed that last stair, crowded her against the lookout’s wooden wall and kissed her in the sunlight, body to body. Heat built so fast she could hardly breathe. She tore her mouth away and thumped her head against the white-painted boards. “Look. Here’s the thing. The same problems that stop me from walking down the hill make this, um...”
“Lovemaking?”
“That. Make it difficult for me to fully, sort of, participate—”
“In the lovemaking?”
“Yes. In that.”
He moved back to the stairway, pulled it up and hooked it.
Kellen and Max were isolated and safe from the world.
“Eight years is a long time, and I promise I can take my time, work around your injuries, make the lovemaking good for you.”
He irritated her with his emphasis and repetition of that word. “How will you do that?”
His brown eyes glinted with humor and promise. “I’ve practiced a lot when I was alone.”
She gave a spurt of laughter and surprise, and grappled with the information he had so tactfully presented. “You didn’t... You haven’t...”
“No.”
“But you thought I was dead.”
“You weren’t dead. You were gone. You were my woman. We had made promises. Not in a church, but with our bodies. I was always waiting for your return.”
She blurted, “No wonder your mother doesn’t like me!”
He threw back his head and laughed, all big grand amusement and beneath that, a simmering pool of waiting molten sensuality.
How did she feel about him waiting for her when he had no assurance she would ever return? Flattered and...and terrified. Because she wasn’t anyone special. She had no exotic, erotic gifts. She cleared her throat. “I guess I should say that I never had any sexual relations while I was gone...either.”
He caught his toe on a board on the deck and stumbled, righted himself and asked, “Why not?”
“I never trusted another man enough to open my body to him.”
Max took a breath. “I should say that it doesn’t matter, that however you lived your life was fine with me. But that would be a lie. Eight years ago, I won your trust. Won’t you trust me again?” He held out his hand, palm up.
He had done that before, always leading, never coercing. “I have friends,” she said. “After battles fought side by side, I trust them. They proved themselves to me and I proved myself to them. But you—you’re different. I already do trust you. You are the one person I’ve always trusted. Maybe it’s chemistry. I think it’s an instinct in my mind and a wisdom in my soul.” She put her hand in his.
He left the door open to the breeze and the birdsong and led her inside to the bed.
* * *
Max made good on his promise.
Long and slow and warm. Kisses on every bruise, care for every injury, words that cherished and enhanced.
This man not only loved to kiss for the pleasure of kissing. Each caress was a sensuous pleasure, the act of love was an act of worship that escalated into a steady deep rhythm: sweat and whimpers and groans and triumph.
And after...oh, after was a slow descent from the heights, cushioned by touch and breath and joy. Then sleep and waking, stretching to find her body felt better—sex as a cure-all?—and smiling as she watched him naked in the kitchen, stirring up something on the stove.
He saw she was awake and said, “I found hamburger in the freezer, a can of tomatoes in the pantry, some dried herbs and fresh garlic—apparently, Zone grows his own, which makes him a farmer, too. So I’m making my aunt Sarah’s spaghetti sauce.”
“Sounds good. Is there pasta?”
“No, but there’s cornmeal, so we’ll make polenta.”
“Did I say good? That sounds wonderful.” She was starving. “Shouldn’t you put on an apron? It seems as if you’re courting disaster.”
“I hate to be putting clothes on just to take them off again.”
“Aren’t you—?”
“Cocky?”
“That’s the word.” A fully clothed Max Di Luca was a very nice-looking man. Naked, he was an inspiration. When he was cooking her dinner, he was... Well. She could never ever let another woman know about this. If word got out, he would be inundated with offers to star on a calendar as all twelve months of mouthwatering goodness.
He put the lid on the pot, turned the burner to low and came back to bed. He stretched out against her, and suddenly the single bed mattress was too narrow, especially when he propped his head on one hand and leaned on his elbow. “What do you want to ask me about?”
She had thought they were going to make love again. Which made her nervous and giddy at the same time. But talking—that made her nervous without the giddy.
She sat up and pushed the pillow against the wall and then didn’t lean back. She had been avoiding so much, the questions and the answers about their relationship, about what exactly had happened that she could remember and what had happened she could never remember. She prided herself on her bravery, but she wasn’t brave about this welter of emotions, joy and pain. She wet her lips. “I don’t know how I had a baby. How was that possible? Tell me how I had a baby.”
If she thought to disconcert him, she failed utterly. “I thought you would never ask.”
32
Kellen plucked at the fraying hem of the wool blanket. “I figured...it was a birth like most births?”
“Like most births? Her mother was in a coma. You were in a coma.” Max gestured widely. “Do you feel no curiosity about those months after the shooting?”
“It’s not that I’m not curious. But for me... I feel as if I went crazy and woke up a different person. I feel guilty for being shot—”
“How could you feel guilty?”
“I was upset with you. I ran away rather than be mature and discuss our problems. Then he found me and shot me.”
Max came to his feet. He ran hand over his face as if trying to create an expression of understanding. “That’s ridiculous. I didn’t know your whole story, but it was clear you’d been hurt in a relationship. Hurt...physically. Hurt in every way possible.”
“Yes,” she said faintly. “An abusive relationship...”
“I got that figured out. When we met, when you saved Annabella from that bastard
who is her father, you had scars. Burn marks. There had been broken bones. You were still in the process of healing physically and mentally. So after we got together, you were jumpy. Something happened...” He trailed off.
She didn’t fill in the blank. Even now, she was a little shocked, a little angry that he had snooped into her private papers. He read her cousin Kellen’s résumé and believed it was hers.
He continued, “And you got scared and upset, and you ran. No guilt.”
Shocked and angry didn’t change the facts, and she took responsibility for her actions. “Running away was thoughtless and led to disaster.”
“You might as well blame my sister for marrying the bastard who tried to kidnap their child.” He shook his head. “There’s too many threads here. I can’t even begin to process the idea of your guilt.”
Hostility rose in her. “Nevertheless, I feel guilt.”
“Okay. Fine. My sisters say women are allowed to feel what they feel and men should shut up about how feeling that way is stupid because men are a bunch of insensitive beasts.”
“That’s what your sisters say?”
“When you strip away all the tact and rhetoric, yes.”
Kellen relaxed, laughed again and held her stitches. “I feel guilty that I don’t remember Rae’s birth.”
“All right. All right. Look. You were shot in the head at close range.” He came to her side and lifted her bangs and smoothed the red ring of scar as if he’d done it many times before. “You were in the hospital. You weren’t expected to live. No one could figure out how you were alive at all. But you were so strong. Annabella told me she could feel your spirit fighting to survive. I don’t know. Probably she said that because I sat there for so many hours by your side because I—” he looked directly at her “—I felt guilty.”
“Why?”
“I made you run away. I didn’t run fast enough to save you before that bullet...” He faltered.
She took his hand. “You didn’t make me run away. I ran because, when I was presented with a problem, that was what I did...then. It’s different now. If there’s one thing I learned in the Army, it’s that no one can outrun a bullet.”
“So I shouldn’t feel guilty?”
“No, please continue. It’s nice to have company in Guiltyville. When did you realize I was pregnant?”
He tensed again. “Not for a damned long time. You were being fed and given fluids intravenously, and your body was under huge stress as you went from trauma to a desperate bid to repair the damage. The doctors were amazed that, first, you lived, then that you seemed to be...not recovering, exactly, but that your brain seemed to be creating new circuits, going around the damaged areas. The medical team said they’d never seen anything like it. They were so focused on your head, and it never occurred to me it was possible for you to be pregnant. You had told me—”
“—that I couldn’t have a baby. I didn’t think I could. I lost a baby. My husband’s child.” She carefully phrased her next words. “The miscarriage occurred in difficult circumstances.”
“What did your husband do to you?”
So it didn’t matter how careful she was. Max understood that Gregory was at fault. “He pushed me down the stairs.” Kellen said it without flinching or crying for the loss of her baby. Maybe she’d already cried all those tears. “The doctor told me I couldn’t get pregnant again. But he was a small town doctor. He didn’t do any tests, so I guess maybe—”
“He wasn’t right? Obviously not. What did he say about your bruises and burns and broken bones?”
“Nothing to me. If he had the nerve to say anything to Gregory, I imagine he was told to mind his own business.” She thought back. “In fact, that was the last time I saw that doctor.”
Max watched her; just watched her.
“I’m fine now,” she assured him. “I can take care of myself. No one’s ever going to hurt me again.”
Still, Max watched, as if he wanted to burrow into her mind and understand her past and all the moments that had formed her.
She prompted him, “How did you discover I was pregnant with Rae?”
“Oh. That. It took a cleaning lady to say, ‘How come she hasn’t had a period?’”
Kellen began to comprehend that chaos and emotional turmoil Max must have felt. “How many months along...?”
“Almost five months. Rae was tiny. She’d had a traumatic first few months in the womb. Once the cleaning lady said her piece, I saw the baby bump and it was like—how could I have been so blind?” He was angry, at himself, at the world. “I’d spent hours with you, days and weeks, and I hadn’t noticed.”
“How could the doctors have been so blind?”
“There is that.”
The lid rattled on the pan on the stove.
He leaped up to give the pot a stir, then returned to bed. This time, he sat on the edge of the mattress as if he could no longer relax, as if this story required him to be alert. “They did all the tests, ultrasounds, everything, and at five months, Rae was racing to catch up developmentally. She was doing well, and the doctors...they theorized that the pregnancy hormones were so powerful that they were the agents that repaired the damage in your brain.”
“So you knew I was going to wake up?”
“No! No. The monitors detected brain activity but it’s a long way from a few sparks to walking and talking and...you’re a miracle.” Max had a way of looking at her as if she was a miracle, one he loved and appreciated.
He made her take deep breaths, feel the warmth. “What about Rae?”
“It was now a balancing act. We wanted to save Rae—”
“Of course.” Kellen understood that. She was glad of that.
“The medical team wanted to keep her in the womb until she was at least seven months along and had the best chance of survival. Then they would take her by C-section.”
Kellen put her hand on her belly. She had no scar.
“The team kept telling me Rae was normal, and I could see in the ultrasound she was active and... I was hopeful and broken at the same time. Then.” He shook off her hand and walked to the window and looked out.
“Then?”
“They had monitors on you all the time. Monitors all over. I didn’t understand... I mean, maybe they told me, but they told me so many things and I was... They weren’t monitoring you for labor. They didn’t realize you were in labor until my mother was watching the fluctuations in your blood pressure and said, ‘That’s it!’ By that time, they couldn’t do a cesarean. Rae was in the birth canal.” His voice grew thick with emotion. “I thought I was going to lose you both.”
“I’m sorry.” Kellen wasn’t apologizing, but offering her sympathy.
“The doctor didn’t get there in time to catch the baby. Your nurse delivered her. She handed Rae to me in a towel. You can’t comprehend how tiny she was, and she opened her eyes and...” He turned to face Kellen and put his hand on his heart.
Kellen felt tears welling. He had been so alone.
Then, with Rae, he wasn’t.
“The first time I held that baby, we bonded. The months after her birth were... My God. There weren’t enough hours in the day, enough days in the week. Every minute was claimed. I should be with Rae, I should be with you. The court case against my sister’s husband was ongoing. Then he committed suicide and the death made news. After realizing that the city hospital didn’t have the resources to care for a comatose woman, not even to realize she was in labor, I had you moved to a private hospital. You had twenty-four-hour care. You were never alone...except that time when you woke up.”
She nodded.
“Meanwhile, Rae was in an incubator for two and a half months. I was there every day for hours, holding her, feeding her, making sure she was cared for. When I wasn’t there, my mother and sisters took turns. I was so afraid she would die,
but she was a miracle baby. At last, she came home, and I discovered what being a single parent meant. My family helped so much, but a baby is a full-time job!” He looked helpless, as if the mere memory stripped him of strength. “She had to be fed all the time, then she got colic and cried for months. I wanted to bring her in to see you, to put her in your arms so you’d know, somehow, that you had given birth to a wonderful healthy baby girl.”
Kellen didn’t point out that a wakeful colicky baby didn’t sound so wonderful to her.
Max paced toward her as if he couldn’t stay away. “I feared to take her into the hospital. Private or not, infections and illnesses were rife.”
“I understand.”
“One day, you were gone. Security video showed you waking, struggling to your feet, getting dressed... You’d been showing signs of waking, and we were hopeful. But my God, to come out of a coma and leave? The medical establishment was amazed.” His beautiful brown eyes grew dark and muddy. “I was livid.”
She could believe it, looking at him now as he stood by her bed, his cheeks red and flushed, and his fists clenching. She put her hand over one of his. “I’m sorry. When I woke, I thought... I thought I was in an asylum.” That she remembered all too clearly: her panic, her desperate need to escape.
“You should have had someone with you at all times. You were supposed to have someone with you.” He turned his hand in hers, grasped her fingers. “If I hadn’t seen the security footage that proved you were alone for less than fifteen minutes, I would have sued them... I should have sued them, but I didn’t want to destroy that young woman’s life.”
“The nurses’ aide?”
“Yes. She left you alone because she was in the corridor, receiving a marriage proposal. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. But I still don’t understand how the Army would take you. I searched... It never occurred to me to check the military.” He was asking the questions now, wanting to know, to understand. “How could they let you in? You were too thin. You were weak. You had the scar of a gunshot on your forehead!”
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