A Marriage To Fight For

by Raina Lynn

  But her heart kept coming back to the same point. He’s not a cop anymore. No more bullet tag with drug dealers. No more waiting for the phone call that might send her rushing to his side at a hospital somewhere.

  “Your disability checks have started,” she said. shaking off the pointless debate. “Why don’t you spend some of it on a night or two in a bed-and-breakfast I know of? It’s very wheelchair friendly. Owned by a retired nurse. Not a bad place.”

  He looked considering a moment, then shook his head violently. “I’d never come back. I’d find an alley and live in a cardboard box first.”

  Laughter burst out, but she strangled it off when she saw his face. He wasn’t joking.

  “What about spending some time with Mom and Dad?”

  “No!” He looked horrified, and she half expected him to fling himself out of the wheelchair and pace the room. “I won’t do that to her.”

  That made no sense. “Do what to her?”

  “Nothing,” he snapped. Silence spun out as it so often did now.

  The depth of his despair pulverized her resolve into dust. “You could come home.” It came out in a little-girl voice, not at all the strong proposal she’d wanted it to be.

  He recoiled as if she’d kicked him in the stomach.

  Why? Is living with me so awful? She choked back a sob.

  “We’ve been through all that, babe,” he rasped out. “The marriage is dead. It needs to stay that way.”

  Blood pounded in her ears, and every feminine instinct she possessed suddenly screamed that he was lying to himself, needing them both to believe. Come on, Hughes. Everything’s on the line now. Push! Push hard!

  “Garrett, you nearly got yourself killed trying to come home to us. And our relationship hasn’t been exactly platonic since.”

  He grimaced. “I know where this is headed, Maggie, and you’re only suggesting it because Blake butted in where he had no business. A reconciliation would be foolish.”

  She shoved her chair away from her desk, her brain kicking into high gear. If ever in her life she needed to be devious, it was now. “Reconciliation? You arrogant jerk! I only intended to invite you to stay until Blake lifted his quarantine.” She turned her back on him so he couldn’t see her eyes, praying her.body language said “Insulted ex-wife. Handle with care.”

  “Garrett, when I mentioned the other stuff, I was only pointing out that we still care for each other and it wouldn’t be a war zone like with many ex-spouses.” Wow, Hughes, that lie actually sounded reasonable. Maybe a good dose of desperation was what you needed all along. Desperation or not, she knew if he wasn’t an emotional disaster zone he’d never buy any of this garbage she was shoveling.

  He stayed too quiet for too long, and all she could hear was the thunderous rhythm of her pulse, convinced she’d scream from the pressure. What was he doing!

  “Temporary?” he asked breathless.

  She cast a glance over her shoulder. He looked like a man on the rack, and she nearly fell at his feet. “Three weeks—give or take a little. We’ll play it by ear.”

  His sapphire eyes seemed to look into her soul. “I don’t know, babe,” he said, hedging.

  She groaned in genuine frustration, knowing he’d misinterpret the cause. “If you’re not interested, fine. Stay here.” She sat down and returned to her discreet desk-edge grabbing. The phone rang, and she did her best to handle the call while appearing to ignore him. Not an easy task when she could hardly talk around the lump in her throat.

  “I have a patient to check on,” she said afterward. “Do you want me to take you back to your room? It’s on my way.”

  Defeat dulled his magnificent eyes. “I have no right to inflict myself on you. Not even temporarily, but I can’t seem to....” He cut himself off. His shoulders sagged. “I’m a selfish man, Maggie. Blake’s stunt aside, I need you.” The face he lifted to her radiated a torment that burned soul deep. “I can’t take three more weeks in this prison.”

  My poor hero. Welcome to mere mortality.

  Knowing their entire future rested on her reaction, Maggie clamped down hard on the urge to fling herself at his feet. Each step she took as she moved from behind her desk was made with absolute precision to betray nothing. “Then come home.”

  He nodded, his expression begging forgiveness for being weak. “We may live to regret this,” he said hoarsely.

  She stepped behind him and took hold of the back of his chair so he couldn’t see the hope and fear that had to be written all over her face. “Regret won’t be a first for us, will it?”

  Maggie couldn’t get the house ready until Monday, and the intervening weekend was the longest two days of Garrett’s life. Anticipation heated his blood while conscience condemned him as the worst kind of coward. When Blake had made his announcement, something snapped. Worse, Maggie had watched him disintegrate. Facing her at all humiliated him. A strangling politeness crippled each conversation. His problem he understood. But why was she uptight? Did she regret her kindness already?

  In the old days, he would have demanded that they talk it out In the old days, he wouldn’t have let her hide behind overly bright smiles and trivia. But the old days were gone and trivia was all either of them could manage. By the time they reached the house on Monday morning, they hardly spoke at all.

  It had been a long time since Garrett last saw the house he and Maggie bought fifteen years ago. He’d practically sweated blood to come up with the down payment. She had still been in school and Rick wasn’t walking yet, not the most ideal time to buy their first house. But the two-story, white stucco had been too good a bargain to pass up. The neighborhood was solid and unpretentious, the kind where people kept their yards up and their noise down, the kind where he wanted his family to put down roots.

  As Maggie pulled into the driveway and killed the engine, he drank in years’ worth of memories. The water fights on the front lawn, the day he and two-year-old Rick planted the sycamore tree out front. He looked up into the towering branches and smiled. So many good times, so many bad. His mind played through them like an unending movie, and he didn’t immediately notice Maggie beside the open passenger door, his wheelchair at the ready.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I kind of zoned out.”

  Maggie puffed out her breath in a nervous laugh and glanced at the house. “This place will do that to you.”

  “Does the front door still squeak?” he asked.

  Her smile relaxed a little, apparently relieved that he hadn’t asked anything serious. “Loud as ever. I defy any burglar to get through it without waking me up.”

  He cast her a reassuring smile and opened his mouth to tell her everything was going to work out just fine, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie. He was here for one reason. He was a helpless cripple who’d wimped out. He disgusted himself.

  Involuntarily, his gaze traveled to the sloped, concrete driveway. The incline wasn’t much worse than many of the ramps at RPI, but getting out of a car at that angle wouldn’t exactly be a piece of cake. The sidewalk connecting the driveway to the house was nice and flat. No problems there. But getting into the house meant three steps up to the porch and a half step over the doorsill.

  Several times during his years as a police officer, he’d stared down the barrel of a suspect’s gun. Each time, he’d stood firm. But the sudden wrenching terror of not being able to get into his own home made his blood run cold in a way he had never imagined. A taunting voice reminded him that it wasn’t even his home anymore. “I think we have a problem.”

  Her eyes clouded with sympathy. “Don’t worry. Getting in and out of a car is something you’ve practiced.”

  His old enemies—helplessness and frustrated anger—slammed into him. “I meant the porch, damn it!”

  She started to reach out a reassuring hand, then withdrew it, no longer the woman who loved him but a professional doing her job. That made it a lot easier.

  “We’ll go in through the back,” she said co
olly. “There’s only one step between the ground and the sliding glass door leading into the dining room.”

  “One or ten hardly matter,” he snapped.

  “I put in a temporary ramp back there.”

  “Oh.” Embarrassment climbed aboard with all the other garbage, and Garrett levered himself from the car into the wheelchair without falling on his face. A little victory.

  They went through the side gate to the backyard. A fortypound canine ball of steel-gray fur gave Garrett a stunned look, then raced to his side. Between the whimpering and wiggling, the dog could hardly stand.

  “Hairy?” Garrett sputtered, then gazed up at Maggie. “He’s got to be fifteen years old. I thought he’d be gone by now.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I guess he’s like the rest of the Hughes family. We’re all pretty tough.”

  Garrett only half listened as she described the aging dog’s antics. The rest of him was absorbed in Hairy’s total acceptance. The animal didn’t care if Garrett was paralyzed or not. He was home and, to Hairy at least, that was all that mattered.

  The dog dashed off to retrieve his prized possession, a wellchewed, faded blue Frisbee. He plopped it in Garrett’s lap, sat back on his haunches and barked once.

  “You’re kidding.” Garrett stared.

  “Nope,” Maggie answered. “He doesn’t do the heroic leaps he used to, but he likes to think he can. Throw it low, and he acts like he’s king of the world when he catches it.”

  A ribbon of panic sliced through Garrett. Throwing a Frisbee. Simple. Anyone can do it, right? Not him, not anymore. Garrett was left-handed now, and throwing plastic disks wasn’t a life skill that RPI taught. This was just the first of a thousand things guaranteed to frustrate and torment him.

  “Uhmmm, maybe later.”

  Maggie gave him a probing stare. “You stiffened up.”

  “It’s nothing.” It came out more harsh than he intended. “I just want to get into the house.”

  “Tired?”

  He wasn’t, but he shrugged noncommittally. It beat admitting the truth. He tossed the Frisbee onto the grass by the dog’s front paws, and Maggie pushed the wheelchair toward the covered patio. He deliberately looked away from Hairy’s disappointed face and tried to find something to think about other than this unexpected challenge, one he’d failed because he hadn’t found the guts to try. And that bought him the greatest defeat of all.

  He caught sight of the new flower bed to the left of the patio and nearly groaned out loud in relief. Here was a subject he could talk about.

  “You’re right,” he said with forced cheer. “Those roses look good there. Did you really reroute the sprinkler system yourself?”

  Maggie froze. Her voice came out choked and uncertain. “How did you know about the roses and the sprinklers?”

  Idiot! The only time she mentioned that was while you were in a coma. “You told me, babe,” he said softly.

  She was quiet, too quiet. “How much do you remember?”

  He shrugged, then mentally groped for a way out. She’d asked him a point-blank question, and by rights, he needed to give her a straight answer. He’d never lied to her, and he refused to start now. Hairy chose that moment to land in the middle of his lap, and Garrett had his hands full with wiggling dog and blue Frisbee.

  Her attention diverted, Maggie shrieked at the dog.

  Thanks, boy, Garrett breathed inwardly. I owe you.

  Hairy offered only token protest as Maggie grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to the ground. He gave her a soulful look—plastic disk still in his mouth—and wagged his tail.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she muttered. In one fluid motion, she sailed the disk across the yard in a clean arc. It bounced off the wooden fence, and Hairy snatched it out of the air.

  Garrett looked away. This whole scenario was too much like the young father at RPI who tried to throw a ball for his son but couldn’t. Helpless. Useless. A burden to family and society. The accusations pounded his mind and soul. To banish the debilitating fear, he riveted his attention on the beat-up steel ramp resting on the sliding glass door’s sill. Gouges, scrapes and stains marred the textured surface. The thing looked grotesque against the carefully tended yard and house.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked

  “I rented it from a moving company,” she said, apparently oblivious to his spiraling depression. “A contractor will be here next week.”

  She opened the sliding glass door and Garrett wheeled himself into the dining room. Once inside, he gritted his teeth against the bittersweet sense of homecoming. The same hint of flowers so uniquely Maggie hung in the air, just as it had when they’d lived together as man and wife. He glanced at the cherry-wood table shoved toward the wall to make a path wide enough to accommodate his wheelchair. A generous bouquet of flowers sat atop it. Flowers were Maggie’s one frivolous expenditure, and they had figured prominently in his original plans to win her back.

  This was a mistake. A horrendous mistake. His jaw muscles clenched to the point of pain. Living here, even for a short time... He swallowed hard. I only thought staying at RPI would kill me. This really will.

  “I don’t like that look, Garrett,” she said. From her tone, she wasn’t in any better shape than he. “What are you thinking?”

  He snorted in self-derision. “Same old stuff.”

  She moved in front of him, and he glanced up into her tight, fierce smile.

  “Want some coffee?” she asked.

  His pent-up breath eased out in relief. She hadn’t pursued it. “Please.”

  She wheeled him into the living room, then spoke over her shoulder on her way to the kitchen, “Has the house changed much?”

  He looked around the room. Their old nineteen-inch color TV had been replaced by a thirty-six-inch big screen with a built-in VCR. A huge tape cabinet stood beside it. You always were a movie nut, babe. But what has changed that I don’t know about?

  His gaze raked the room, desperate for familiarity. The maple coffee table was the same. So was the L-shaped sectional, except reupholstered. Buying new would have been cheaper. Why had she gone to the expense? They were functional, solid pieces of furniture, but hardly anything that couldn’t have been discarded. Sentiment?

  For that matter, why did she still live here? This was little more than a starter house. Her income had ballooned dramatically after her promotion to assistant director. Why hadn’t she sold this place and bought something better? Memories of the good times? Or had it been because she’d lived such an insecure life as a kid that once she put down roots, they stayed down?

  The photo collection on the far wall was about what he remembered. It had some new additions, but one photo was conspicuously missing—their wedding portrait. Not surprising, he decided, but its absence did nothing to keep him from seeing it in his mind’s eye.

  He had wanted to give her the ultimate fairy-tale wedding, not realistic on a rookie cop’s salary, but with the family’s help he’d made it happen. Maggie and his mother sewed for weeks on the gown that had swirled around her feet like a river of satin. The flowers alone had cost half a month’s pay, but when she’d walked down the aisle toward him that afternoon, bouquets lined every pew, and she’d stepped on a carpet of rose petals.

  Garrett gripped the wheelchair’s hand rims and shook off the memories. Seventeen years ago he would have killed anyone who’d even hinted that their lives would come to this.

  Wheeling himself across the new plush carpet required more effort than he expected, but he managed to get closer to the wall to inspect the new photos. There were assorted enlarged snapshots of his parents, of Blake’s family, yearly photos of Rick’s soccer teams, eight-by-ten school portraits, and one of Rick and Maggie perched on a granite boulder the size of a barn.

  “Donner Lake,” Maggie explained from behind. him. He hadn’t heard her return. “It wasn’t the same without you.

  As a family, they’d hiked all over the Sierra Nevada, the
Donner area one of their favorites.

  “I’ve missed a lot, haven’t I?” He hadn’t meant to sound so grieved, but he could never join them again and his voice betrayed that pain.

  Tentatively, she touched his shoulder. There had been a time when touch had been as natural as their love. Both had suffered grave blows. She smiled self-consciously, and he covered her hand with his own. In silence, they turned their attention toward the other photos, old and new. Rather than soothe, the memories of the times shared scraped open old wounds, and Maggie withdrew her hand.

  “I think I’d better check on the coffee.”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice, and watched her walk away. Maggie’s figure had matured over the years, and he found her vastly more erotic than the sixteen-year-old he’d fallen in love with. She was trim and supple, yes, but she also radiated the aura of a woman who’d lived life. The faint lines around her eyes and the scars of old stretch marks from pregnancy were badges of honor, not flaws to be hidden or corrected. She was a woman who had worked hard to get what she wanted, and success had its own sexuality that youth couldn’t hope to compete with.

  “I need her,” he said in a low, desperate whisper. “And the last thing she needs is me.”

  Chapter 8

  Rick worked the noon to nine shift that night, so Garrett and Maggie sat down to dinner alone. He didn’t call attention to the fact that they hadn’t shared a meal in this house since the night before they separated. From her overly self-conscious body language, she was just as aware of it as he and just as reluctant to bring it up. The last time she’d cooked for him, he was convinced she wouldn’t really go through with the divorce. So much had happened since then.

  He’d had such plans when he’d boarded that plane in Washington. The intimate dinners they’d share. The quiet walks. The way she’d feel in his arms again. Instead, she stood beside him, both of them as tongue-tied as teenagers on a blind date.