A Marriage To Fight For

by Raina Lynn

  By now, Garrett was free of the sling, and he kept his head above water by holding on to one of many chrome exercise bars bolted to the side of the pool at water level. His expression at her approach could only be called horrified. “Maggie, I’ve got enough baby-sitters.”

  “Tough. You’re not in charge.” Boy, saying that felt good! She grabbed the edge of the decking and slipped into the water.

  “Maggie, for God’s sake, you can’t be serious!” Determined, she moved toward him, the water swirling softly around her breasts.

  He glowered savagely. “I said no.”

  She cocked her head and asked sweetly. “By some chance do you know how much I’d make per month on unemployment?”

  He blinked in puzzlement at the non sequitur, and her own confidence rose a notclr or two. She reached out to him then, her fingers grazing his shoulder. His pupils dilated with a heat so intense she half expected the water to boil.

  “Go back to work.” He shrugged her hand away.

  Sapperstein held back, smirking, while Maggie moved behind Garrett and locked her arms around his ribs. Her breasts pressed against his back, sparking a surge of sexual need that raced to her core. She didn’t speak, didn’t dare try.

  “Maggie, stop it.” The order was broken and guttural, harsh.

  Fighting flames the water couldn’t hope to cool, she clenched her teeth, leaned back and drew him toward her. Then she walked backward to give his body the chance to float free of its own weight.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  She drew a quick breath. “Nothing you haven’t done every day for weeks.”

  “Take me back to my room.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Hughes,” she chirped, struggling to sound cheerfully unaffected by the play of his muscles beneath her hands as he shifted in her hold. “You’ll go back when we’re finished.”

  Then she did something really stupid. She rested her cheek against the side of his head. She couldn’t breathe. They’d made love in a swimming pool more than once. Did he remember? Was he remembering those times now? The freedom? The playfulness?

  With a virulent oath, Garrett twisted out of her grasp. In one fluid motion he slid his right arm through an exercise bar to hold himself in place and swept his left around her shoulders. Before she had the time to react, he kissed her. The press of his lips against her own was hot, real, consuming. Every nerve ending in her body screamed to life and demanded his touch. She lost her balance under the storm and scrambled for footing, her arms wrapping instinctively around his chest.

  We’re both going to drown, her brain complained, but her fevered body didn’t listen.

  He continued the sensual assault, very much the Garrett she had loved for twenty years—secure, confident and in control.

  Her brain kicked in, finally. Don’t kiss him back, you idiot. It’ll only make the next rejection that much harder. Yet her lips parted, demanding more. She tried to grab a bar but missed. Turn your head away! That’s all it takes to stop this... heaven. The protest weakened under the storm, then died completely. She sighed in long-denied pleasure as their breath mingled, as they drank deeply of each other. It had been so long, so very long.

  “Boss?” Sapperstein called out, sounding somewhat uncomfortable. She and Garrett jolted apart, maintaining just enough hold on each other and the exercise bar to keep Garrett’s head above water. “You want us to leave you two alone?”

  Despite her auburn hair and fair skin, Maggie rarely blushed, but she felt her face crimson. Garrett muttered something unpleasant under his breath, and Maggie groped futilely for a witty comeback while she attempted to reestablish a more appropriate hold on Garrett’s upper body.

  Garrett found his voice before she found hers. “We’ll be fine here—alone.”

  Both staff members looked to Maggie for confirmation. She nodded. As they left, she muttered, “The higher-ups are going to hang my skin from the nearest flagpole.” Her voice echoed eerily in the room.

  “Why?”

  “Do you know how many rules I’m breaking?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good.”

  They let the silence spin out. Garrett moaned, then turned back to her. “Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?”

  She bristled, but kept her voice level. “That didn’t feel like a go-away kiss.”

  He looked at an unfocused point across the pool. “It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”

  He loved her. She knew he did, but now, she wasn’t the only one fighting against it. That made it somehow worse.

  The anguish in his eyes matched that in her heart. “Maggie, look. You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have sent Sapperstein and his shadow away.”

  She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I take it you want me to call them back?” A firm nod was the only answer she got. “Too bad,” she said. “I’m already in hot water—no pun intended.”

  “Meaning?” His brows lowered in annoyed suspicion.

  “I just elected myself chief baby-sitter.”

  He did swear then, a pungent phrase filled with earthy explicitness. Without warning, he pushed off, turned and swam away, his arms moving in slow, even strokes. She shrieked and scrambled to catch up. “What are you doing?”

  He rolled onto his back, continuing without pause. “It’s called swimming. I’ve been doing it since I was five. Although my legs used to take a more active role than just trailing along behind,” he added bitterly.

  Maggie sputtered incoherently. “All you’ve done lately are exercises. You could have warned me you were going to try something new.”

  He didn’t answer, not that she expected him to. Swimming with just arms and body was an art, one that took more energy than he had to spare. She swam beside him, watching for signs of fatigue. It wasn’t long in coming. Before he’d made it to the far end of the pool, his face took on that telltale lined look, but he pushed himself onward.

  “That’s enough, Garrett. Too much exercise and you lose the benefit and keep all the bad.”

  He ignored her, and she grabbed for him but missed. He swam on, her protests falling on deliberately deaf ears.

  “Testosterone,” she muttered, “is the bane of humanity.”

  When his stroke faltered, she tackled him, and they both went under. When they broke the surface, Garrett spewed water and painted the air blue.

  “You never used to swear.” She panted as she flipped him neatly onto his back.

  “You never tried to drown me before!” His body trembled from overexertion.

  They moved to the edge of the pool, catching their breath, silently fighting the awareness that blazed between them.

  “You don’t find me repellent,” he observed quietly.

  Startled, Maggie gave him a sharp look. “Why would I?”

  Breathy laughter puffed from his throat. “At the moment, what you see is the sum and total of my physical prowess. That’s enough to repel any woman.”

  Her heart screamed to comfort him, to hold him, but she kept her place half an arm’s length away, close enough for the ripples created when he moved to sizzle across her body. “You don’t know how far you’ll come back.”

  His eyes hardened. “I’m not cut out for life in four-wheel drive. I won’t be an object of pity.”

  “And I won’t lie to you, Garrett. Wheelchairs aren’t for sissies. But you’re strong. Inside where it counts. Men like you are the ones who succeed.”

  “I’ll make sure I tell people that.”

  She gave him a level look. “Demand respect. You’ll get it.”

  A long pause followed where she felt shut out of his thoughts. Then he sighed with an aching vulnerability. “I’m scared, babe.”

  She nearly cried out under the shared pain of this dynamic man reduced to such a confession. “I am, too,” she managed past the constriction in her throat. “I am, too.”

  Chapter 6

  Maggie assumed that her willingness to walk away from her career
was probably responsible for her continued employment. The director grumbled and whined about the liability potential of an employee overseeing a former spouse’s care, certain that the slightest ripple of an old quarrel between the ex-Hugheses would erupt into a malpractice suit. Maggie held her ground. Finding a replacement with her qualifications without notice wasn’t that easy. In the end, he nearly gagged, but gave her the go-ahead.

  Over the course of the next six weeks, she and Garrett fell into a tense routine. They never discussed the desperate kiss in the pool, nor was it repeated. Most days he mentally locked out the world, excluding even her from his obviously troubled thoughts. She didn’t even try to figure out where he stood with Rick. As near as she could tell, it was still a powder keg waiting for a lighted match.

  Maggie held her breath as the indicator lines arched on the computer screen, lines that marked nerve activity in his muscles, each small increase hard fought. His skin was sweat streaked. Veins stood out at his temples from the strain. Her, gaze traveled to his left leg, bare below green shorts and girded with electrodes. The flaccid muscles twitched. Her heart pounded.

  “You’re almost there.”

  She expected one more all-out effort on his part, but he relaxed and leaned back. The lines on the screen plunged. He took a deep breath, marshaling all his reserve strength from deep within. The lines rose, faster at first, then more slowly. Then it happened. Garrett moved his leg an inch.

  “You did it!” she shrieked, leaping to her feet. The rush of victory coursed through her, slamming to a confused halt as she saw Garrett’s ravaged face.

  No happiness, no joy, only an agonized relief, punctuated by eyes too moist. the lowered his lids and turned away. She wanted to hold him, but he needed this moment of mental privacy, and giving him that took more willpower than she thought she had.

  Eventually, he turned back to her, his turmoil shielded. “Not much for six months worth of work, but a start.”

  She brushed her hand across his cheek and gave him a none too stable smile. The poignancy of the moment made speech impossible. He captured her hand and kissed her palm. The sensation of his warm, firm lips against her flesh arrowed straight to her heart.

  Soon, he’d be ready to leave RPI. She briefly entertained asking him to come home, not the wisest move if she hoped to retain her sanity. But the vision of him back in the bed they’d shared during their marriage tempted her. It had been far too long since she’d nestled in his embrace, warmed by his body.

  Days crawled by, the progress minimal. They clung to each other, yet held part of themselves back, fear and insecurity creating an emotional buffer zone that neither dared cross.

  The day he slid each foot in turn a few inches across the floor, Maggie didn’t think first, she simply threw herself into his arms. He caressed her spine with his good arm, and his breath puffed against the tender flesh of her neck. Pleasurable chills raced from her scalp to her toes, and she tilted her head back, exposing her throat.

  Groaning low, Garrett began a leisurely exploration along the pulse point with his lips. Maggie pulled away just enough to kiss him full on the mouth. He held her tighter, his firm lips demanded compliance, and she unreservedly opened to him. Maggie was completely awash in the sea of passion, drinking in the spicy scent of his skin and answering his kisses with a pure, wanton fire of her own. Running his fingers through her hair, he began a sensuous massage of the back of her head and neck. Her breasts ached, and she groaned a wordless plea as he one-handedly unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra.

  His strong, square hand slid along the edge of her breast, and she turned, pressing her flesh into his palm. Again, her head lolled back, and she bit her lip to keep from moaning aloud with the pleasure. He played her body with maddening skill. Distantly, Maggie knew this wasn’t the time or place, but the sexual frustration she’d battled for four-and-a-half years had them both fully in its grip.

  She gave a chagrined laugh under her breath. “You always did enjoy making me suffer.”

  “If something’s worth doing,” he said, chuckling, tasting her throat, “it’s worth doing right.”

  She wanted to snap off another retort, but his foray was taking him on a thorough exploration of the skin along her ribs. The ache at the junction of her thighs burned to the point of pain, and she clenched her jaws.

  When he shifted her trembling body and trailed kisses along her collarbone and lower, voices in the next room brought sanity to the storm. She started to pull away, but he made a curt, negative order low in his throat, holding her in an iron, one-armed grip. Maggie panicked and braced her palms against his shoulders and pushed away.

  “We can’t do this,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Someone could walk in any time.”

  “So? Lock the door,” he murmured low and enticing. Even with one arm, his strength was notable, and he easily pulled her against him for another searing kiss that stole her breath away.

  “I could lose my job.”

  “Babe, I want to take you. Right here. On the floor.”

  The thought of a cold floor against her back wouldn’t ordinarily sound erotic, but memories of some of their past adventures of the body added another spark to her dangerously overheated frame.

  “Yeah, well, forget it.” Frantic, she tried to gather a shred of sanity, and as she shifted to get off his lap, she felt his arousal beneath her thigh. Her gaze widened and sought his.

  Masculine assurance burned in his eyes, and one corner of his mouth quirked. “It seems my...uhmmm...problem...was only temporary.”

  More flashes of memory ripped through her mind, memories of him buried deep within her, carrying her to the brink of fulfillment only to tease her to greater heights before allowing their world to shatter in blinding flashes of ecstasy.

  “When did you notice the impotence was fading?” Her trembling worsened as she fought the hormonal overload and tried to have a rational conversation. Garrett’s range of motion was extremely limited, but they could still indulge in a lot of experimenting on that floor.

  “It’s been getting better over the past week. This morning when I woke up, I knew for sure.” A predatory light mingled with relief and confidence. In his mind, he was a man again. “I take it this is part of the overall healing?”

  A lump formed in her throat. Swallowing hard, she nodded then forced her thoughts in other directions. “I hate to ruin the moment, but the door doesn’t lock.”

  He frowned in censure, and she blushed.

  “Seriously, Garrett, if anyone catches us, I’ll get fired. Even if I don’t, my staff would never let me live it down.”

  His jaw clenched in a combination of sexual frustration and dark suspicion. “Are you sure that’s the only reason?”

  Understanding dawned, and without conscious decision she cradled his beloved face in her hands. “I don’t see you as a charity case, Garrett. What we feel is real.” She wilted. “It’s just not very bright.”

  He digested that a moment, then nodded, pacified.

  Maggie looked down at herself. Her blouse gaped open and her bra hung loosely from her shoulders. “Talk about making unauthorized use of a therapy room.”

  Looking torn between swearing and smiling, Garrett reached out for one final touch. She shuddered with want, but clutched the front of her blouse together. He chuckled in pure male self-satisfaction. Glaring at him, she slid off his lap, her pulse still throbbing with the echoes of unfulfilled desire.

  “Mom! What are you doing!”

  As one, Maggie and Garrett jerked their attention to Rick, standing in the doorway, his face a study of horrified betrayal.

  Mortified, Maggie turned away. “Not again,” she moaned low.

  Garrett muttered something about Rick and psychic timing. Louder, he said, “Come in and sit down.”

  Maggie strained to hear the soft swish of the door closing or the tread of footsteps, the slightest sound to indicate Rick had complied, but there was nothing but silent condemna
tion. Worse, she could feel his eyes on her. There was no changing room in here, not even a closet she could slink away to, so she stood with her back to her son and fumbled with her bra, feeling like a teenager whose father had caught her with a boyfriend.

  Her fingers seemed glued together, and smoothing her bra over her breasts and fastening the hooks took nightmarishly long.

  “Rick, stop glaring at your mother. You were raised better than that.” Garrett’s low voice was edged in iron.

  “I thought it was over,” Rick said, accusation sharp in his voice. “You told me it was over.”

  Maggie flinched.

  “And you’re always looking for an excuse to prove me a liar, aren’t you?” The iron took a sharper edge. “I said, sit down.”

  Maggie fumbled with the last button and turned back around as Rick flopped, rebellious, into the chair she’d vacated when Garrett’s therapy took such a heated side trip.

  “Okay, I’m sitting,” he snapped. “Now what? Is this where you tell me casual sex is off-limits for me, but it’s okay for you?” The moment the last slipped out, Rick clamped his mouth shut, eyes huge as saucers. He’d gone too far and knew it.

  Raw fury radiated from Garrett as he sat unnaturally still in his wheelchair. Other than the occasional swat on the bottom for extreme offenses when Rick was little, Garrett had never struck their son, but Maggie knew beyond all doubt that he was dangerously close to physical violence.

  Drawing on his tremendous store of self-discipline, Garrett took a slow shallow breath and rested an elbow on the armrest. “Don’t stop now, son. What’s the rest of it?”

  “What do you mean?” Rick asked, seeming to shrink further into himself.

  “I’ve heard about how I deserted you. How you and your mother mean nothing to me, et cetera. Now out with the rest of it. What else?”

  Rick sputtered incoherently, words beyond him. Garrett waited him out, motioning to Maggie to pull up a chair from the other therapy station. Numbly, she complied. As she sat down, she caught a glimpse of her blouse. Sick mortification swept through her. The buttons were one hole off. Worse, Rick noticed it, too.