Each Precious Hour

by Gayle Wilson

  “It’s just a little late for an abortion,” she said, sickened at his response.

  “God, Robin,” Jared said harshly. “You know me better than that. You have to know me better than that.”

  He was right. She should have known better, she admitted, infinitely relieved at his anger. What in the world was wrong with her that she could make a mistake of that magnitude? Jared carried pictures in his wallet of all those nieces and nephews. He kept up with their birthdays, knew enough about their interests to be able to buy presents that were appropriate. So he would be the last person—

  “Or don’t you?” he asked softly.

  “I do know you better than that,” she said. “But I’m not sure what you meant by telling me not to ask. So...maybe you better just tell me what you want me to do.”

  He laughed, the sound low, quick and without humor. “I want you to marry me. Which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I’ve wanted you to marry me almost from the first day I met you.”

  The obvious sincerity of those words was comforting. Jared wanted to marry her. He still found her attractive. He still loved her. And he wanted this baby. All of which should feel like the answer to a prayer, she supposed, in her situation. At least she thought most women would feel that way.

  He had never left her in the dark about his feelings. Jared didn’t play games. Maybe his honesty was a result of always living life on the edge, despite his claims that he really didn’t think about the danger. “I know you have,” she said softly.

  “So does this change things?” he asked.

  “Between us?”

  “Does it change the way you feel about marrying me?”

  Bottom line. Trust Jared to get there. And it took her a long time to answer. A lot of pain stood in the way. A lot of things she had never been able to make him understand. About her father. About her. About the way she felt.

  “My mother died when I was nine years old,” she said. “Then Daddy was killed the next year. I loved him better than life itself. But...he was also all I had left. He was my security. My entire world. And when he died...I thought I was going to die, too. Sometimes I wanted to.”

  His eyes were on her face. He was still holding her foot in both hands, but his thumb had stopped its slow glide.

  “It hurt so much,” she whispered. “You can’t imagine. I don’t think anyone can.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long time. She wished he would, so her mind could break away from the agony of the memory.

  “Do you wish you had never known him?” he asked finally. “Did it hurt so bad that you regret having known your father?”

  She wasn’t sure what he was asking her. Or why.

  “Did you?” he prodded. “Did you ever regret knowing him?”

  “I regretted loving him so much. I was angry and bitter and hurt when he died. At times I hated them both for leaving me.”

  What she had told him wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Not what he had been expecting, maybe, but it was the truth. Uncle Jim had tried to help her deal with that anger. He had been the only one who’d understood what she was feeling, maybe because he had been feeling it, too. He had tried to get her father to give up law enforcement and oversee the ranch when he’d decided to go into politics. His offer hadn’t been charity or a make-work job. Uncle Jim had really needed his brother’s help.

  If only her father had said yes, he would still be alive today. He would know this grandchild she was carrying. He would have missed none of the years of her growing up, years that had been so empty without him.

  He had said no to his brother’s offer instead, as blindly stubborn about the importance of what he was doing as Jared was. And less than six months later, during a routine traffic stop, a drunk had put a bullet into his heart. Suddenly her father was gone, and Robin had never forgiven him for leaving her.

  Never forgiven him. The words were almost shocking. She couldn’t ever remember having had that thought. Or acknowledging that feeling. Now, however, she knew it was true. She had never forgiven her father for deserting her.

  Just as she would never be able to forgive Jared if something happened to him. She would once again become that hurt child, angry at the world and at everyone in it. And this time, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to recover.

  “You worried about Jeff’s kids not having a father,” he reminded her.

  “They lost their father. After they had known him. That has to be harder.”

  “Harder than never having a father?”

  “Yes,” she said stubbornly.

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  “What I believe—”

  She cut off the words because she could hear the anger in them, the shrill stridency in her tone. And she hated it. She always tried to be reasonable and logical. She had tried to explain very rationally to him how she felt, and what her father’s death had meant to her life.

  Jared had pretended to listen, just as he was now, but he hadn’t heard any of it. If he had, then he would understand that she couldn’t go through that again. She couldn’t bear it. Now he was asking her child—his child—to bear it as well.

  “I do believe that, Jared. I always have.”

  He released her foot and stood up, his movements abrupt, so that she knew he was angry, too.

  “You’re not that hurt and lonely little girl anymore, Robin. You’re an adult. A grown woman. It’s about time you started acting like one.”

  “What the hell does, that mean?” she asked.

  “People die,” Jared said. “Everybody dies. Everybody loses their parents. Some early and some late, but it’s a fact of life. You could be killed walking across the street tomorrow. Or catch one of the new antibiotic-resistant bugs. I could. Everybody dies. You can’t live your life afraid of that.”

  “How dare you?” she said, her voice low and tight.

  “I dare because you’re throwing out lives away. Throwing away any chance that you might be happy, that we might be happy together, because you can’t get over your fear about something that happened more than twenty years ago. How long are you going to let your father’s death control your life?”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “That’s exactly what you’re doing. But you’re too much a coward to admit it, so you hide behind all this...crap about not wanting to put our kids through what you went through and about my selfishness. This isn’t about my selfishness. It’s about yours. You’re perfectly willing to raise our child without me because you want everything your way. No risk. No pain.”

  “Life is full of risks,” she said angrily. “I know that. There are enough risks around to make anybody think twice about walking out the door in the morning. But those are dangers we all have to live with. The kind of risks you take—”

  “Are necessary,” he interrupted, his voice raised so that his words overrode hers. “Necessary to save lives. I make no apologies for taking them.”

  “I don’t want apologies,” she said.

  “Then what the hell do you want?”

  “I want a husband who won’t come home in a closed coffin. I want a real father for this baby. One who will be around for his first Little League game and for his high school graduation. I don’t want a hero who’s so damn busy laying his life on the line for everyone else that he doesn’t have one left to give us.”

  The last words seemed to echo in the room. Sometime during that tirade, Robin had gotten to her feet. She was close enough to Jared that she could have reached out and put her hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat, strong and steady under her palm. Suddenly she wanted to do that.

  She wanted him to hold her. To tell her that none of the things she feared would ever come to pass. To promise that he would always be there when she or their baby needed him. But he didn’t. His mouth was tight, his eyes cold as black ice. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said. He never did.

  They all came first. All those other people. Those n
ameless, faceless people he was hired to protect came before her. Before his own child. And she would never forgive him for that, either.

  He nodded once, the movement quick and furious. Then he turned and picked his tie up from the arm of the chair and, carrying it, walked to the door. He didn’t say anything else before he opened it and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway outside. The sound the door made slamming behind him echoed in the empty room just as her last words seemed to.

  I don’t want a hero who’s so damn busy laying his life on the line for everyone else that he doesn’t have one left to give us. The problem was that she knew, even if he didn’t, exactly how big a lie that was.

  “YOU WANT ME TO TALK to him?” James McCord asked softly.

  “Of course not,” Robin said, smiling at him. “I’m a big girl now. I don’t want you trying to fight my battles.”

  Her uncle nodded, but his blue eyes were concerned, still examining hers, as if through them he could see into her mind. Or her heart.

  Telling him about her pregnancy hadn’t been half as painful as she had expected it to be. Jim McCord loved her. She had always known that. His love had been the one constant in her chaotic childhood. And despite the fact that he was very naturally concerned about her, he hadn’t been judgmental about the pregnancy or even about the fact that she had no plans to marry. She had made that clear to him, without divulging Jared’s identity or the specific reasons for her decision.

  Maybe being forced to own up to what had happened in Nam and to face the criticism that followed had mellowed James Marshall McCord, Robin thought. Maybe it had made him a little less sure than he used to be that he had all the answers. For whatever reason, he had been far more sympathetic than she had expected.

  Of course, no matter what he said tonight, she couldn’t really trust him not to get involved. If she had been able to see any way around it, she wouldn’t have told him while they were in New York. At least not until after his speech.

  However, if Jared had figured out so quickly that she was pregnant, then considering the close proximity she and her uncle would be in during the next few weeks, she knew she wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer. Not from anybody, really.

  She had deliberately chosen to tell him in the limousine on the way from the airport. And she had tried to time it so they wouldn’t have much opportunity to talk before they reached the hotel and were surrounded by the inevitable horde of reporters.

  “Do you want me to go home?” she asked.

  McCord’s brow furrowed. “Now, you mean?”

  “Whitt says after you announce, someone will come forward who has a lot more experience at all this than I have. And you’re going to need a good spokesperson, someone who can handle any problems that arise. I’ve been troubled by the things that are being said,” she said carefully.

  “I’m not looking to replace you, honey. The job’s yours as long as you want it,” McCord said earnestly.

  “Well, I’m grateful, but pretty soon the reasons Whitt wanted me before the cameras in the first place are going to change. A lot,” she acknowledged ruefully.

  “You’ll still be the best-looking thing these poor old boys up here have ever seen,” he said gallantly.

  “And you’re still just as full of it,” she said, laughing.

  Eventually he joined her, his rich laughter filling the big back seat they shared.

  “I don’t think when that happens, however,” Robin continued, “that as your spokesman I’m going to set the tone Whitt’s trying for. And frankly...” She hesitated, still reluctant, for some reason, to throw in the towel. “Frankly, I’m not sure I’m going to be up to the grind. Missed meals and sleepless nights and traveling all over the country on a moment’s notice. It’s taking its toll, and we haven’t really even gotten started yet.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked, blue eyes searching her features.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. “I promise you I am. But I’m tired. And I won’t be effective in the role Whitt’s assigned me much longer. There are things I can do at home that will be just as valuable. Or things I can handle in D.C.”

  “Whatever you want,” he said, reaching out to take her fingers into his. Despite the chill outside, his big hands were warm. “You know that. You do whatever’s best for you.”

  She nodded, smiling at him again. They sat without talking in the darkness of the car, speeding toward the hotel where everything would accelerate during the next few days.

  “What did you mean before?” he asked, finally breaking that silence. “About being troubled by what’s being said. Paul told me nobody’s making all that much of the incident.”

  That was the way McCord always referred to what had happened in Vietnam—“the incident.” Robin knew him well enough to know that his choice of words meant that he was keeping at a distance the reality of what he had done. After all this time, it still wasn’t something that was easy for him to talk about.

  “I didn’t really mean that,” Robin said. “And I wasn’t talking about your esteemed opponents. I don’t think anyone is paying much attention to what they’re saying about anything.”

  “Then...?”

  “We’ve attracted a following. A real mixed bag of nuts.”

  They both laughed at the unintended pun, relieved maybe by the break in the tension. But Robin’s reservations about what was going on were too serious to let her be truly amused about the people stalking the campaign.

  “We’ve got survivalists, religious kooks, all sorts of doomsday fanatics who have latched on to the millennium theme. Whitt thinks I’m making too big a deal of it, but they scare me.”

  “They’ve been there all along,” McCord said, sounding relieved, as dismissive of her concerns as Katie had been.

  Robin was disappointed. She had been counting on him to see things her way. It seemed that after all he had been through the last few weeks, he would be more attuned to the possibility of something going wrong. And certainly to the possibility that the threats people made were sometimes backed up by action.

  “I know,” she agreed. “But they seem to be growing, both in number and in vehemence.”

  “It’s part of the price you pay to be in politics these days. Every candidate has people who are so opposed—”

  “Every candidate isn’t tying his entire campaign to the arrival of the new millennium,” she interrupted. “Which some people are equating with the end of the world.”

  The bluntness of her words stopped him, halted the easy reassurance he had been making. Maybe because for the first time she had allowed her fear to show. “It’s a good strategy,” he said. “Paul says it’s having an effect.”

  “It is. Just not the one you’re looking for.”

  “You can’t let those people get to you, honey. What are they doing that’s got you so riled up?”

  “Picketing. Demonstrating. Making accusations.”

  As she enumerated the list, she recognized how harmless those activities sounded. As if the people she feared were just exercising their good old American right to free speech, protected by the Constitution.

  For some reason she didn’t tell him about the riot. Someone would, but she thought she had given him enough bad news for tonight. Besides, if her uncle knew that she had been in the middle of that disturbance, he might very well send her home to the Altamira. And she wasn’t ready to go. Not quite yet.

  “Sticks and stones,” McCord said easily.

  Like the one that had opened up the cut over Jared’s eye, Robin thought, but she didn’t say anything.

  “They’re just words, baby,” McCord said after a moment. “The really bad stuff is behind us. I want you to relax and enjoy the rest of this. Enjoy the speech. You’ve been working too hard. You’ve allowed yourself to get all upset over some folks who are nothing but talk.”

  Compared to Jake Edwards, these people had done nothing but talk, she supposed. And she didn’t want to spoil this moment of triumph
for her uncle by worrying him about something that wasn’t important. Running for president had been a dream of his as long as she could remember. And now...

  Now, finally, it was about to become a reality. And if they could trust the numbers, James Marshall McCord might really be the next president. Despite Jake Edwards. Despite the senator’s confession about what had happened thirty years ago in Vietnam.

  He was on the threshold of his lifelong dream. And no one wanted it to come true more than Robin did. By the same token, however, she didn’t want the people waiting outside the hotel to tarnish it. Or to tarnish what he had accomplished in his life.

  “Sticks and stones,” he had said. Only words. But she didn’t want him to hear the words these people were shouting or the names they were calling him.

  She had already warned the hotel that they might need to put on extra security for the senator’s arrival. If things had been different between them, she might have called Jared and asked him to speak to the local precinct, reminding them about what had happened a few days ago. Instead, she had left the arrangements in the hotel manager’s hands, believing that since the warning had come from the guest who had been caught in the middle before, he might take it seriously. She wished Uncle Jim would.

  As the limo pulled up to the curb in front of the hotel, she could see the lines of protesters, their placards bobbing up and down in the darkness beyond the lighted area, which extended from the lobby and across the sidewalk directly in front of it.

  It was too dark and they were too far away for McCord to be able to read any of the signs, she supposed, but he would hear the catcalls. There was nothing she could do about that. At least he could make his own evaluation about whether or not she was overreacting by being worried about these people.

  The doorman opened the limousine door, and the level of light that had been flooding the area increased dramatically. Lighting for the video cameras, she realized. The media was here to capture McCord’s arrival, since the latest polls were indicating he was still the front runner for the nomination.

  Robin took a breath, bracing for the plunge into the storm of questions and shouted comments, both from the reporters and from the contingent of protesters on either side of the entrance. The media’s presence would only encourage them, as it had before.