“Since I have you here as a captive audience,” he began tentatively.
She heard the shift in his tone. The tiny part of her that wasn’t completely exhausted went on the alert.
“Yes?”
He toyed with the rim of the bracelet on her wrist, his tone lofty as he continued. “And you don’t want to make love.”
She wanted to, oh, she wanted to very much. But she knew she couldn’t allow herself to. “Chase—”
He pretended not to hear the warning note. “Let’s play twenty questions.”
She shifted and looked at his face, confused. “About what?”
“Us.” The expression on his face was serious.
Something warned her that this wouldn’t be a good idea. Something else canceled it out. Nerves resurrected themselves, making her tense.
“Chase—”
He felt the tension in her arms, in her spine, and lightly trailed his hand along her arm, soothing her.
“I pulled you out of a hot elevator, I figure that gives me the right to push a little here. I need to know things, Gina. Really know things.” He sat up, looking at her. “What went wrong between us? It was so good in the beginning.”
Yes, it had been. But every argument, started on a point, had gotten so involved, so convoluted, she’d lost sight of everything except for the hurt. Always the hurt. They’d both withdrawn from each other, to nurse wounds the other hadn’t understood.
She shrugged, helpless to explain in a word or two. Or fifty. “Maybe we were too young.”
Maybe. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t try now. He inclined his head, as if to give her that point. “We’re older now.”
And shouldn’t make the same mistakes. “And you thought wiser,” she reminded him.
“So wise me up. What did I do wrong?” He forced himself to relax and leaned back again, taking her with him. She felt as stiff as if she were perched in a dentist’s chair, waiting for a root canal to commence, he thought. “I’ll make it easy for you—Chase, you really upset me when you—”
She played along. Why not?
“When you worked late. When you never came home when you were supposed to.” What was begun in a singsong voice ended with a sliver of emotion. Of hurt.
They were on a roll. He hoped. This time he wouldn’t get angry, he schooled himself. This time, he’d talk things through.
“You know why I did that. I wanted to get ahead. For us.” He saw the knowing, doubtful look in her eyes and pressed on. “Not just for me. I’ll grant you that I wasn’t too crazy about being poor for the rest of my life.” He blew out a dry laugh. “I’d gone that route the first twenty years. I didn’t want to continue that way.”
She knew he hadn’t been well-to-do, but he made it sound as if the situation had been a lot more dire than she’d imagined. “You never told me you were poor.”
Chase smiled as he remembered. He’d deliberately steered clear of the subject of his past. His parents were dead. There was no point in talking about it. “It’s not exactly something you figure will dazzle a woman you’re trying to impress.”
She felt closer to him, as if they’d opened a door he’d always kept sealed. The action caused something to crack a little within her. A door that had been locked tight.
“How poor?”
He definitely didn’t like to remember, but he’d started this and there was no turning back. If he were honest, then perhaps she would be, too.
“Hand-me-downs from strangers. Bill collectors at the door, repossessing furniture. Moving quickly so we wouldn’t be taken to court for three months’ unpaid rent. A father who enjoyed talking to his bottle more than working.” He lifted his shoulder and let it drop, attempting to shrug away the memory just as easily. But it remained, a tiny glowing ember in the dark. “That kind of poor. I wanted to make something of myself to escape that.”
He looked down at her face. “So that you wouldn’t have to do without things the way my mother did. I didn’t want that kind of life for you.”
It wouldn’t have been, because she’d had a job as well. But possessions didn’t matter to her. “All I wanted was you, not things, not money.”
Chase’s mouth hardened just a touch. “You’d forget that if you were hungry.”
She turned so that she was facing him, her eyes intense. “I was. For you.”
Gina took a deep breath, plunging into her explanation. If he could bare scars, so could she. They’d both been too closemouthed before.
“I grew up with all the basic necessities, Chase. More. I never wanted for anything. Except love.” Even as she said it, a bitter pang sliced through her. She’d never given up striving for it, even though it eluded her. “That was the ‘thing’ you couldn’t buy anywhere. My father was so wrapped up in making the next promotion, the next stripe, the next bar on his uniform that he didn’t even remember when my birthday was.” Bitterness twisted her lips. “And it wasn’t as if he had a whole bundle of kids. There was only me.”
“April 2,” Chase said softly.
The bitterness receded, replaced by a smile. “Well, he couldn’t seem to remember that.”
His eyes met hers. Maybe they were finally getting to it, he thought. “I’m not your father.”
She knew that. In her mind. But maybe her heart had gotten a little confused. Both, she felt, had rejected her for a career.
“You were behaving the way he did. I didn’t particularly want to be the wife of a high-powered accountant. I just wanted to be your wife, your friend.” She looked at him with accusing eyes. “You shut me out, physically and emotionally. I didn’t know how to handle that, so I yelled.”
He closed his hand over hers in mute apology. She blinked her eyes to keep from crying. “Did you ever wonder why I named things?”
He remembered one incident in particular when her habit had gotten to him. He’d called her infantile. Chase regretted it bitterly now. “I figured it was a holdover from your childhood.”
There was no denying that. “It was. Because I had no friends. Because I was lonely, constantly uprooting, constantly moving from place to place. I married you and thought I’d finally stop being lonely.” Her eyes held his for a long moment. There was no accusation this time. Only sadness. “I didn’t.”
He rubbed his hand over hers. Without the raised voices, the yelling, things were a great deal clearer. “So what you’re saying is that I let you down emotionally?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, accepting the blame, smarting from it. “How about the flip side of that?”
A log crackled and broke in half, sparks flying into the darkness like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Their own independence day, she thought. “What do you mean?”
“You let me down emotionally as well.” He saw her brows knit together, not in annoyance, but in an attempt to understand. “I wanted you to be proud of me. I didn’t expect the little woman act.” Her brows formed a single straight line now in her confusion. “You know, ‘For every great man, etc. etc.’”
For the first time this evening, she grinned. “Great, huh?” She pretended to measure the size of his head.
He took her hands into his and held them. “You’re not listening.” He started again. “I didn’t want you to remain home, barefoot, pregnant and cooking, but I didn’t expect you to throw pot roasts and potatoes at me, either.”
She remembered vividly and couldn’t help the grin that split her face, even as she tried to subdue it. “They were little potatoes.” The tiny round ones he’d been so partial to.
“They were hard.”
“They were burned,” she countered, “waiting for you to come home.”
He pulled her onto his lap. “Sorry I missed our anniversary.”
He’d never apologized for that before. She had thought he was indifferent to it. Gina felt herself melting and couldn’t do anything about it. “Sorry I was such a good shot.”
His hand curved over her thigh. He wanted her. Bo
dy and soul he wanted her. And he wanted a new beginning. “Gina, I really, really want to start over.”
“Okay.” Her eyes shining with amusement, she presented her hand to him. Humor was her defense against the vulnerability she felt. “Hello. My name is Gina Delmonico.”
He batted her hand away. “Not that over.” He drew her closer to him.
The heat of his chest radiated against her, doing far more to warm her than any fire could. “You’re going too fast again,” she warned softly. But she didn’t resist.
“You were progressing too slowly,” he countered, unwilling to release her.
In the spirit of the moment, she compromised. “We’ll split the difference.”
She was game. Hopeful. She could suddenly feel the magic, and though she told herself that it was only the aftermath of what she’d been through, the aftermath of having him come to her rescue, she welcomed the feeling and held on to it with both hands.
“Okay, how about we just curl up by the fire and go to sleep together?” He’d missed sleeping with her. Just sleeping with her, her body curled against his.
Gina smiled. She rather liked that. “Sounds good to me.”
He settled her against him on the sofa, then looked down at her face. “Oh, one more thing.”
“Yes?” She was already feeling sleepy.
“I love you.” The words were soft, whispered against her hair, shimmering along her skin.
She held them to her as if they were a physical thing. “You always could carry on a good argument.”
He let his eyes flutter shut. All in all, it had been a hell of a long day. “That’s not part of the argument. That’s part of the solution.”
“You think?”
He opened his eyes again, unable to believe it was going so well. “I think.”
She was still afraid, she thought. If, in the morning, with the sun on her face, she still felt this way, then maybe it was worth attempting to go from here. “Let me sleep on it.”
Having her here like this wasn’t very settling. “I’d rather you slept on me.”
She bit back her smile. “This is a public place.”
“Benjamin’s sound asleep by now,” he pointed out.
She nodded, looking off into the dark. “Benjamin’s sensible.”
Chase pretended to take offense and shrugged indifferently. “He’s not so hot.”
“No,” she agreed softly. Gina brushed back a stray lock of hair that had fallen into his face. “Not like you.”
He slipped his hand over hers and pressed it to his cheek. “And I’m getting hotter.”
Gina laughed a moment before she brought her mouth to his.
Outside, the rain began to abate as nature settled down once more.
Chapter Eleven
Gina dreamed that night, a long, continuous seamless dream that replayed itself over and over in her mind, like a carousel spinning endlessly around a brass ring.
She dreamed of children. Two of them. A boy and a girl. The girl had laughing blue eyes and the boy had beautiful blond hair. Her children. Chase’s children. It seemed incredibly right being there, in the midst of their laughter. A feeling of absolute contentment pervaded her as she watched the children play together with Chase. As they pulled her in to join them.
Her heart brimmed with love.
She resisted waking up. It was so much nicer in the small, complete world her mind had created. Attempting to hold on to it as long as she could, Gina instinctively moaned when shafts of probing light nudged at her, bringing her back to reality, to dawn and a very soft sofa in Albuquerque.
Her lids fluttered involuntarily as she hoped to win a few more minutes of solitude and comfort wrapped in the satiny blanket of sleep. But she was awake and there was no returning to her dream.
That had been all it was, a lovely, wonderful dream without a ghost of a chance of coming true. The dawn had chased it away.
There was that word again, she thought, opening her eyes. Chase.
Chase.
He was propped up on one elbow, balanced on only a portion of his side, his back flush against the sofa. She could see that there was absolutely no way in heaven that he could have been comfortable. But he seemed satisfied to remain in that early-Christian-martyr position, just looking at her.
She felt immediately self-conscious. Mornings were not her best time. She usually looked like something a windstorm had deposited on a doorstep.
“You’re staring.”
“Sorry.” He grinned and continued looking at her, his eyes hardly blinking. “Reliving old times.”
She wished he’d stop gazing at her like that. She felt gritty and disheveled. “If you really miss them,” she said as she sat up, shaking the last remnants of sleep from her, “I’ll throw a pot roast at you.”
He laughed as his fingers glided along her arm. She had to steel herself against the sensation they were creating. She wasn’t one hundred percent successful.
“I like selecting what I relive.”
Gina looked at him, intrigued despite herself. There was so much, she realized, that she hadn’t known. Last night had shown her that. “You’ve done this before?”
His lips twitched slightly. “Slept next to you? Hundreds of times.”
He was deliberately being obtuse. “No, lain around and watched me sleep.”
“Yes.”
It seemed hopelessly sentimental and not at all like Chase. “Why?”
He lifted one shoulder, the one that didn’t feel paralyzed, and let it drop. “It was the only time your mouth wasn’t moving.”
She might have known. “I see.” Gina attempted to rise and had her wrist ensnared for her trouble.
“Although,” Chase continued easily, not ready to release her just yet, “your mouth could do some incredibly fascinating things.”
It wasn’t vanity prompting her. It was a need to know just what he really thought, deep down inside, of her. “Such as?”
He shifted into a sitting position and everything within him groaned like Rip Van Winkle’s body after the twenty-year nap. “Such as last night.”
Last night. It was already beginning to haunt her. She’d been just a little too needy last night, a little too vulnerable. That wasn’t the way to progress with Chase. She had to deal from a position of strength and independence.
“Last night was an aberration.”
He wasn’t going to have her retreating again. They’d come too far for that. “So you neck with any guy who rescues you out of an elevator?”
Gina chewed on her lip to suppress the unexpected smile he evoked. “Only in Albuquerque.”
“I see.” Chase nodded solemnly, taking in the information. “I guess I should count myself lucky that Benjamin didn’t get to you first.”
Maybe she would stay, she thought, wavering. He looked so cute....
No, she needed a little time to pull herself together, to pull her thoughts together. She didn’t want to rush into another mistake, the way she had the last time.
“I guess so.” She looked down at his hand, still attached to her wrist. When he removed it, she rose. “I’ve got a call to make.”
Chase was beside her, attempting to gauge her mood from her tone. “Canceling your reservation?”
“Canceling Rene.” She had been about to say that she was going to make a new reservation since perforce the old had been canceled for her by the forces of nature. But something stopped her at the last moment. In their place, other words had come. Words that seemed to emerge of their own volition, as if it were her heart speaking instead of her mind.
Was she going crazy?
She suddenly looked a little disoriented, Chase thought. “What’s wrong?”
Gina didn’t answer him immediately. She merely shook her head. The situation seemed surreal. Everything, she thought, seemed surreal. The storm, the very fact that she’d been thrown together with Chase after all this time. Everything.
The only thing that didn’t
seem surreal to her was her feelings. They were very, very real.
But real or not, she wasn’t about to just suddenly let them loose. Last night was undoubtedly a departure from the norm for both of them.
They were great in the short haul, but she knew from experience what they were like together in the long run. A living, breathing disaster. Rather than risk going through all that heartache and turmoil again, Gina knew she would much rather have this past evening as a pleasant memory to hang on to.
She crossed to the desk and reached for the telephone on it.
So then, knowing all this, feeling this way, why wasn’t she leaving?
Chase shadowed her steps, reluctant to let her out of his sight just yet. There were still so many more edges to smooth out, so much more to be said. Not the least of which was: Will you marry me again?
He looked at the set of her shoulders. She was wavering. Funny how at times he could read her like a book and at other times she was such a mystery to him. Well, he supposed those were books, too. Just not the ones he enjoyed very much.
He placed his hands on her shoulders, gently bracketing her. “So you’re not leaving?”
“No,” she said slowly, thinking it through as she spoke. “Not yet.” Nervous, she fell back on what she knew. Work. “I’ve got things to see through yet. There’s only about a week more before everything’s pretty much ready to go.”
She wanted to pace, to outdistance this wild, edgy, wonderful feeling until she could put it in its proper place. She remained where she was, staring at the telephone, wondering if she was doing the right thing.
Probably not.
Her mouth was dry. All she could do was feel where his hands were on her. And remember.
She pushed the words out of her mouth. “Then all I have to do is fly back occasionally to make sure everything’s going according to schedule.”
Chase turned Gina slowly around to face him. There was humor in his eyes.
“A schedule,” he repeated.
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