by Cindy Gerard
Slowly she pulled away from him. Her fingers trailed out of his hand as she walked to the porch rail and gazed at the star-spackled sky above them.
Puzzled by her sudden melancholy, he walked up behind her, tugged her back against his chest and waited to hear what was on her mind.
“It was the most beautiful night of my life.” She turned abruptly, searched his face with a sudden, surging expectancy. “I want to feel it again. That freedom. That shift from feeling weighted to weightless. Make me remember, Garrett. Make me remember what it felt like to live for the moment and love without care. Make me feel invincible again.”
There was an urgency in her voice as she clung to him. A wildness in her eyes as she pulled his head to hers.
She asked for innocence—then enticed him with everything but. Capturing his mouth with hers, she lured him into a kiss that was demanding and hungry and tempered with a fierce desperation.
Her aggression shot him from surprised to fully aroused in one hot, fluid heartbeat. Desire spiked through his blood like a fever. He tried to check it but she dragged him under again. Her fingers knotted in his hair were brutal, her mouth devouring.
“Em...baby...slow down.” His breath pumped out, harsh and heavy with the pulsing surge of passion.
She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. Possessing him with her tongue and the erotic press of her breasts to his chest, she tore at his shirt, peeled it over his shoulders and yanked it down his arms.
“Sweet Je—” He groaned as she strung hungry, biting kisses along his jaw. He sucked in a harsh breath when she scraped her teeth over his nipple and, fighting his attempt to still her hands, went to work on his belt buckle.
Need, pure, primitive and carnal, snared him in its grasp when her long, elegant fingers opened his fly, stole inside and surrounded him.
Desire, consuming and suddenly insatiable, possessed him. He was past thinking as he fumbled frantically with the zipper on her jeans, then ripped them down her hips. Lust was a drug, a renegade craving that invaded his blood and set the animal inside him free.
He lifted her, pinned her against the outside wall of the cabin. Through a mind-numbing fog he felt the scrape of her fingernails on his back, was oblivious to the bruising possession of his hands on her hips.
It was her cry that stopped him from slamming himself into her. The fragility of her skin that arrested his hands.
With a smothered oath, he pushed away from her, cursing himself as he struggled with control and a guilt that bludgeoned him like a club.
He didn’t know how much time passed until he felt he could touch her without taking her. Didn’t know how long she leaned against the cabin for support, her eyes glazed with what could only be horror.
“Em.” He caught her against him as much to steady her as to avoid dealing with the beaten look on her face. Shame, thick and cloying, swamped him. “I don’t know where that came from. Baby, did I hurt you?”
“No.” Her breath slogged out on short, labored puffs. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry. Christ. I’m so sorry.”
She jerked away from his hold, her eyes dark and dangerously combatant. “I don’t want you to be sorry.”
Guilt crowded him. With a gentle hand he brushed the hair from her eyes. “I was rough with you. I practically mauled you.”
She batted his hand away. “You were real with me. You took me. Or you were going to before that damnable honor of yours got in the way.” Sparks shot from her eyes. “For once... for the first time... you almost let go of that control you take such pride in owning and took me like a woman.”
Looking battered but somehow victorious, she reached for her jeans, dragged them on. “Don’t take that away from me with apologies. For godsake, don’t be sorry for that.”
Shouldering away from him, she jerked open the cabin door and marched inside.
He stood in baffled silence and watched her go. He’d expected her anger. He deserved it. And she was mad as hell, all right—but not because he’d been rough, but because he’d apologized for it.
At a complete loss to understand what was happening, he scrubbed both hands over his face, then followed her into the cabin.
The music drifting from the CD player should have been soothing. Instead its mellow sound, so at odds with the turmoil he was feeling, was as annoying as fingernails on a blackboard. He hit the Off button with the heel of his hand then, after settling himself with a deep breath, crossed the room to her.
Arms folded beneath her breasts, her shoulders set, she showed him her back.
“I’m trying,” he said carefully, “but I’ll be damned if I can understand what this is about.”
“It’s about respect,” she returned with a fierceness that set him back a full step when she spun around. “It’s about recognizing me for my own strengths. For my own needs. It’s about treating me like a woman.”
He narrowed his eyes, wrestled with an uneasy and unsolicited flicker of anger. “I’ve always treated you like a woman.”
“You’ve treated me like a piece of glass—like some porcelain doll you think you’re going to break if you handle me too rough.”
Confusion abetted frustration and drained him of the last of his patience. “My mistake for caring.”
She shook her head and looked toward the ceiling. “I don’t mean to make it sound like a bad thing. The way you treat me—it’s...admirable.”
“Admirable? My lovemaking is admirable?” Pride stole what loose grip he still held on reason. Sarcasm jumped in to break the contact completely. “Well, hell. Then my mission’s accomplished. Admirable is exactly what I was shooting for.”
Feeling like he was sinking in a quagmire of quicksand, he shoved his hands in his hip pockets and tried to settle himself down. “I thought I was making it good for you.”
“It is good.”
Her fluid softness confounded him even more.
“It’s not just good. It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful, and sweet, and totally... controlled.”
She gave, damn her, and then she took away. He was past frustration now and barreling toward just plain pissed. “I don’t understand. I thought things were going so well. What is it you want from me?”
Emma knew she was handling this badly. She was doing exactly what she’d wanted to avoid doing. She was hurting him—blowing crater-sized holes through a highly vulnerable spot—the impenetrable James pride. But she couldn’t stop now, not now that she’d mustered the courage to level with him.
“I need to make you understand something, Garrett. Something it took me a long time to understand myself. And I need you to listen—really listen to what I’m going to say. Now, more than ever, we need to make sure we’re communicating.”
“I thought we were communicating.” He cast a dark look toward the loft. “I thought we were communicating just fine.”
She let her breath out on a sigh. “If all it took to make this marriage work was you loving me and me loving you, we wouldn’t be here, would we?”
She could not, Emma told herself, let guilt badger her out of finishing what she’d started. No matter how much the disclosures hurt him.
“Besides, we haven’t been communicating. I have. I’ve been the one who’s confided my heart’s secrets to you. I’ve been the one who shared my feelings about my mother—confessed my sense of inadequacy and admitted to my fears.”
She paused for a deep breath, fortifying herself as he scowled at her. “And yes, you’ve been supporting and loving and tolerant and wonderful, but you haven’t come to terms with any of the issues that work on you.”
“Issues? I don’t know what you’re talking about I don’t have any issues.”
“Don’t you?”
Silence crowded the cabin in thick, heavy layers.
“Talk to me, Garrett,” she pleaded at last, her eyes and her voice letting him know she wasn’t going to let him get by with denial or evasion any longer. “Talk to me or when we get
back to Jackson, we go separate ways.”
He looked at her like she’d cut his heart out. She wasn’t so sure she hadn’t sliced off a piece of hers, too.
“After what we’ve shared this week—after all we’ve been through, you’d still consider leaving me?”
She closed her eyes and looked away. “Garrett, with you in my life, there is purpose and power. The last thing I want to do is leave you. But no matter how much I love you, I can’t live with you and not be your partner in every sense of the word.”
He stared at her long and hard. “I swear, I don’t know what you want from me.”
“You do know. You just don’t want to give it to me.”
She rose from the chair, paced to the door. She ran a hand through her hair, then faced him again.
“Look. I know it goes against the grain. I know it’s some man thing inside you that demands you must be silent and stoic and handle everything all by yourself. The sacred male credo. Be strong. Be invincible. Don’t let ’em see you sweat, don’t let ’em see you hurt.
“Only, I know better,” she continued softly and went to him. “I know you hurt. I know when you’re hurting—but you won’t share it. And, Garrett, I can’t stand it when you close yourself off and go through your pain alone. It’s like twin slices from the same blade—I hurt because you’re hurting, then I hurt because you won’t let me help you. I can’t stand it when you shut me out of your life that way.”
She recognized his silence. It was the one that said he was fighting this, even though he knew she was making sense. “All week I’ve tried to get you to talk to me, but you’ve proven you have no intention of doing that. Your mission, clearly, was to cater to my needs instead of yours. You took me horseback riding and hiking and looking for gold. You led me into conversations about Sara and about my mother and our concerns for her. But what did you talk about? Your brothers. Maya and Logan. We never talked about Garrett.”
He worked his jaw and glared over her head.
“God knows it isn’t because I haven’t tried to get you to. But every time I open a door for you to walk through and confide in me, you close it. Not with a slam, but with a gentle evasion, a tender smile, an impassioned kiss that led us away from your feelings and toward another disaster cloaked in play or lovemaking.”
“I wanted to make memories,” he said defensively. “I wanted to make love. I wanted to do everything two people in love are supposed to do.”
“Everything but talk about you and the hurts you harbor.”
He let out a weary breath.
“I need to understand, Garrett. I need to know how you feel about losing your father. How it made you feel to be a child yet be the oldest and feel like you have to carry the weight of your family on your shoulders. To always be the one everyone else turns to for answers and advice. To always feel like everyone is counting on you and that you can’t afford the luxury of letting them down. Not once. Not even once—so you work harder and longer. I want to know why you won’t cut yourself any slack, why you give to that business until you don’t have anything left for yourself.”
“Back off,” he snarled, so abruptly and with such anger her heart leaped to her throat.
“Why?” she asked, almost afraid to, but knowing in her heart she’d struck a nerve so raw that exposing it was the only way to heal it.
“Why?” she repeated more forcefully when his jaw clenched with the strain of his battle with control. “Why, Garrett? Because I might find out the burden’s been a little too heavy to bear?”
His stubborn silence reminded her of just how proud he was and how difficult this was for him. Because it was so difficult, she decided to ease off and try another tack.
“Garrett,” she said gently and took his hand. With reluctance he let her lead him to the table where they sat down across from each other. “I even feel you holding back when you make love to me. Even then, when you take me someplace beautiful, you hold back.”
His scowl was firm, his denial complete, when she covered his balled fists with her hands over the tabletop. “I love how you touch me. I love how you know, even before I do, what I need, what I want. You give me everything a woman could ask for.
“You give me everything,” she repeated softy. “Everything but you. Don’t you see? Even in bed you won’t share what you feel, what you need with me. And what I need is all of you. Without restraint. Just now—out on the porch—you almost gave me that. And then you took it away.”
She saw the moment he understood. Recognized his argument even before he voiced it.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said darkly.
“Hurt me? How could you possibly hurt me when you’re so busy protecting me?”
The words sounded brutal, even to her own ears. She tried to gentle them with the stroke of her fingers over his knuckles. “I know you don’t mean to, but you hurt me every time you deny your own needs. You hurt me every time you treat me like some simpering Southern flower too delicate to handle the needs of a man.”
“I don’t treat you that way.” His eyes were shadowed, his tone defensive. “I’ve never thought of you that way.”
“Don’t you?” she asked gently, trying to soften the sting of her words with the touch of her hands.
The muscle in his jaw knotted tight as he hung on to his resolve. “I try to take care with you.”
“Yes. Yes, you do. And I love that about you. I love to be cared for by you. But sometimes I need more. Sometimes I need to know that you need me as much as I need you.”
When his only response was a deep breath, she pressed on. “I need a partner, Garrett. A partner. Not a protector.
“That day,” she continued, when her words had settled into an edgy silence. “The day I saw you with that woman—”
He rose so quickly his chair teetered as it scraped across the wooden floor with a serrated rasp. “I thought we’d gotten past that. How many times can I tell you, how many ways can I say it? I wasn’t sleeping with her.”
“I know.” She followed him to where he stood at the back door. Stiff arms braced above his head on either side of the door frame, he stared broodily outside and into the night.
“I know that now,” she repeated wanting to make sure he understood that she did.
“Then why are you bringing it up again?”
“Because you need to know what was going on with me then.” And then came the really hard part. “You need to know how your holding back from me made me feel,”
Nine
Emma watched the play of emotions shadow the rugged beauty of his face as he fixed his gaze on a spot in the darkness. He was closing up. He was closing off. His ego, his pride—she’d injured both badly—were at stake here. Recognizing that, understanding their importance to a man like him, she cautioned herself to go slow and easy, but to proceed no matter what the cost.
“Please don’t close up on me now. You brought me here because you wanted to work this out. Garrett, there are layers upon layers of misunderstandings we have to work through if we’re going to untangle all the knots. It’s going to take both of us to do that. And if we can’t get past this one, we don’t have a chance of getting back to where we need to be.”
She collected herself with a deep breath, then began again, picking up the threads of that tattered cloth he’d wanted to throw away.
“When I saw you with her, I saw you enjoying a woman who appeared to be everything I wasn’t. She was aggressive, sophisticated, blatantly physical. All I could think was, this is what he wants? Someone he won’t let me be?”
Clearly uncomfortable with her honesty, he lowered his chin to his chest, his silence as combative as any words. She couldn’t let it stop her.
“So what did I do? Exactly what you expected. I played the part. I shattered like glass. All I saw was you with a strong, self-reliant woman—and I hated myself because she was everything I wasn’t.”
She closed her eyes. Rode out the pain that still crowded her fr
om that day. “It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’d become what I’d wanted to be for the man I’d wanted to be with and hadn’t made allowances for what would happen if that man became bored with me. I felt like I’d driven you to her by being exactly what you wanted me to be. I was as angry with myself for being so malleable. I was angry with you for putting me in that position. And I couldn’t think past it. I just reacted and decided to end it on my terms.
“That’s when I started hating you. At least that’s when I told myself I should hate you. Not only because I’d thought you’d betrayed me, but because you’d made me into what I was. Completely dependent, stupidly content to let you protect me from whatever it was you thought I couldn’t handle.
“And superimposed over it all,” she added, making herself go on, even though she knew her words were tearing him apart, “was the picture of my mother. Beaten. Broken. Living in a chemically fogged world and ignoring a husband who cheated on her without remorse because she felt that she’d failed. That she wasn’t the woman he needed her to be. And, Garrett, I saw myself.”
For a moment she was back there again. She was reliving that horrible day. “It shames me to admit it, but I actually thought about taking the same route she had. I had a full bottle of oblivion in my hand. I even thought about taking it a step further and ending it all.”
“Jesus.” His oath hissed out on a tortured breath.
As much as she was hurt for him, she made herself continue. “It was then that I knew I couldn’t let this beat me. It was then I decided that if anyone was going to pay the price it was going to be you. Only we’ve both been paying ever since.”
At the touch of her hand on his arm, he finally turned to her. The anguish in his eyes tore her apart.
“I’m sorry if hearing that hurt you. But if we’re going to fix this, you have to know where I was, why I did what I did to you. It was knee-jerk. It was wrong. And I can never tell you how sorry I am.”
He looked past her. Slowly methodically he collected himself. “Why didn’t you come to me? I would have understood.”