Fearing that the latter was true and hoping it wasn’t, Melissa felt her own warm flush as she changed the subject. “So what are your plans now?”
“I’d still like to work with kids, but I don’t know in what capacity. With a degree in early childhood development, I could teach or work with social services. I thought about getting my master’s and doing family counseling—not that I know so much about being part of a family. What I’d really like—” She broke off.
“Go ahead,” Melissa urged.
“I’d really like to have a family of my own. I’d like to be a stay-at-home mother who takes care of the house, volunteers with the PTA, cheers at soccer games, and has cookies waiting when the kids come home from school.”
Though she’d wondered about it before, Melissa had never thought it appropriate to ask. That afternoon she just plunged ahead. “Why don’t you have children?”
Maggie’s smile was regretful. “Ross wanted to wait until we got out of debt. Until he was established in his career. Until we could afford for me to stay home. Until he made his first million, then his first hundred million. Until he could make time to be a father. He never ran out of excuses. What about you?”
“After three miscarriages, we ran out of hope.” But that wasn’t entirely true. Though the doctor had made clear that her chances of getting pregnant and carrying the baby to term—or even close to term—were minuscule, she still hoped. She still dreamed about babies, envied her friends, and got wistful at the smell of baby powder.
She still believed in miracles, and she still believed that someday she would get one of her own.
“I’m sorry.” It was such an inadequate phrase to convey all that she felt, but Maggie knew of nothing else to offer. She pitied herself for having no children, but at least she still had the chance. All she needed was a willing partner and a little time, and she could fill her house with babies. How awful it must be for Melissa to know that all the time in the world wouldn’t make her house—or her heart—any less empty.
After a moment, Melissa changed the subject to the Christmas pageant, relating past disasters and mishaps that kept them both laughing through the rest of the meal. They followed Emilie’s recommendation for dessert—Kahlua ice cream pie—then, with a sigh, Melissa neatly folded her napkin and left it on the tabletop. “Much as I’ve enjoyed this, I’ve got to get back to the shop. Can I give you a ride?”
“No, thanks. Ross is picking me up.”
“You don’t drive, do you?”
“You’ve noticed that,” Maggie said dryly.
“I can’t say that I blame you. After what you went through, if you never want to get behind the wheel again, then don’t do it. Bethlehem’s not so big that a healthy person can’t get wherever they want to go on foot—or find a friend willing to give them a lift.”
They paid their tab, then returned to the lobby. Melissa claimed her coat from the tree there, but Maggie left hers hanging. “Thanks for the invitation. I really enjoyed it.”
“So did I. Let’s do it again soon.” Unexpectedly, Melissa hugged her, murmuring, “Welcome back, Maggie. I’m glad you’re here.”
With a lump in her throat Maggie watched her go before turning in a slow circle. She came to a stop facing the registration desk. The desk was empty, but behind it an open door looked in on the office, where Emilie was at work.
Unsure whether it was a good idea and not caring, Maggie knocked on the door. “Hi, Emilie. I was wondering … Could I see the room where I stayed when I visited?”
“Sure. The guests who were there checked out this morning, and I believe the housekeeper has already finished with it.” Emilie came out from behind the desk and led the way up the broad, graceful staircase. The door she opened was in the middle of the corridor and led into a two-room suite. “We haven’t changed a thing in the last year. Everything’s exactly as it was when you stayed here,” she said from the doorway. “I’ll leave you alone to look around. Stay as long as you like.”
She closed the door, and Maggie slowly walked farther into the sitting room. It was beautifully decorated with plush carpet, good antique furniture, and better reproductions, warm colors and spicy, welcoming scents. She brushed her fingers over the marble fireplace surround, bent to sniff a bowl of potpourri, tried out a comfortable chaise beside a bookcase filled with well-read volumes. She had probably eaten breakfast at the delicate table positioned by the windows and watched the television hidden inside a walnut armoire.
She had definitely slept in the bedroom with its four-poster bed, had prepared for the day in the large bath and dressing room next door, had left Ross at the massive rolltop desk with his computer and telephone while she explored. She had lived for days at a time in these spacious rooms, sometimes with Ross, usually alone, but they were as unfamiliar to her as the rest of the town.
Walking to the foot of the bed, she rested her hand on the tapering carved post that reached toward the ceiling and closed her eyes. She focused all her attention inward, back one year in time, and searched intently for something familiar, something that suggested she’d ever set foot in this room before. For one breath-stealing moment she thought she’d found it. A presence surrounded her—strong, commanding—and a sense of security, of well-being, swept through her.
Ross.
Of course, she thought, vaguely amused. All the time she’d spent there alone, and it was his brief presence that registered, his presence that she felt as surely as if …
She opened her eyes, and the fleeting, giddy hope disappeared. Ross didn’t.
He stood beside the bed with a few yards of blue paisley comforter between them. His hands were in his pockets, and his expression was all somber, filled with intense concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Conjure up any memories?”
“No.”
His expression shifted only slightly. Hiding his disappointment so she wouldn’t feel her own too strongly? “This is where we stayed. Where we fought. Where we slept.” With one hand he gestured to the space around them, then let his hand fall, his fingertips resting lightly on the comforter. “And this is where we made love the last time.”
Feeling her body heat rise, she looked at the bed again. It was a king-size, big enough to get lost in, but for one brief time they had found each other instead. She tried to imagine the scene, tried to find it wherever it was hiding in her brain—the two of them trading kisses instead of insults, touching instead of turning away, coming together instead of drifting apart. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t locate the images, neither real nor imagined. Her failure was enough to make her eyes mist over and her throat grow tight, but she refused to give in to the tears.
“When …?” she whispered.
“When we closed on the house.”
“Who …?”
“Me. You were ecstatic about the house. I didn’t see you that way very often, and I wanted to share it. I wanted to feel …”
“Feel what?”
He gave a shake of his head. “Just feel.”
She wanted to know so much more. Was it day or night? Did he turn to her in bed, slide in behind her, awaken her with gentle caresses and erotic kisses? Did he catch her in the middle of something else, distract her with one steamy look and boldly seduce her? Or was he blunt, the way he sometimes preferred, the way she had sometimes preferred? A simple, breath-stealing I want you now had gotten her into bed more times than she could recall.
Once there, had their lovemaking been tender or greedy? Hard, demanding, raw? Had they made love, as he’d called it, or engaged in slick, hot, potent sex for its own sake?
There was a lot to be said for good sex, even more for making love. Either way, she regretted like hell that she couldn’t remember. Maybe it would cool the heat in her body and ease the ache in her breasts, her belly, at her very core. Maybe remembering would bring her some measure of relief … or arouse her beyond bearing.
Ross could do bot
h.
She stared hard at the paisley pattern in front of her in an effort to not put him and the bed into the same scene. Right now she could deal with one or the other, but not both. Then, deliberately tormenting herself, she asked in a throaty voice, “Were we good?”
“We were always good, Maggie. You can’t have forgotten that.”
Always. Yes. From their very first time together, when she’d been a virgin and he’d had very little experience, they had always been good together. Whether it was passion, play, habit, or anger that brought them together, the result had always been spectacular.
She was focused so narrowly on the bed that she wasn’t aware he’d moved until he was standing beside her. “Let’s go home.”
What if she said no? If she locked the door, closed the drapes, stripped off her clothing and his, and demanded the use of his body … He wouldn’t say no. He might want to, but she knew him too well—all the places to touch him, all the ways to kiss him. She knew how to cut through his resistance, how to heat his blood and fog his mind, how to arouse him beyond bearing and satisfy him beyond belief.
“Maggie?”
He touched her hand, and she swore she heard a soft sizzle. Hot and edgy and all too aware that there wasn’t going to be any relief, she took a step back, then headed for the door.
He stopped her halfway across the sitting room. “What’s wrong?”
Her smile was brittle. “Nothing. I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Do you want to stay here awhile longer?”
Her suddenly all-too-clear imagination called up an image of the bed with its paisley linens turned down, of Ross naked—she’d always liked him naked—of herself, slowly removing her own clothes in preparation of taking him deep inside. She closed her eyes, rubbed them, forced the image away. “No. I’m ready.”
They didn’t run into anyone as they made their way silently down the stairs and out to the car.
“Sorry I was late,” Ross said stiffly as he unlocked the door.
“Got tied up in the office, didn’t you?”
The tightening of his jaw was her first clue that her words were sharp, her tone snide. How easy it was to fall into old habits, to get frustrated and take it out on him, even though he hadn’t a hint that she even was frustrated or by what. What would he think if she told him? I was thinking about us in bed, about my hands on your body, your mouth on my body, about heat and need and that terrible, pleasurable pain, and I want it again. I want you now, and that’s why I sound edgy and frustrated and about to explode.
She had no idea what he would say.
She had a damn good idea what he wouldn’t do.
“I was on my way out the door, when the phone rang,” he said, his voice so calm and tightly controlled that she wanted to scream. “It was Dr. Allen. He wanted to know how you’re doing. I told him you were fine.”
She couldn’t make the same sort of obnoxious comment she would have if the caller had been Tom or someone else associated with business—which was fine, because she shouldn’t be making obnoxious comments at all. She was the one who’d insisted that he return to work. She couldn’t blame him now for following her advice.
She certainly couldn’t blame him because he hadn’t magically picked up on the fact that her hormones were coming back to life—and doing so with a vengeance.
Though once, he would have known. Once he would have looked at her and known, and he would have been more than happy to accommodate her.
She missed those days when they were young, in love, and foolishly believed that it would last forever. She would go back to them in a heartbeat if only she could.
At home, before they parted in the hallway to go their separate ways, she cleared her throat. “I didn’t even notice that you were late. That wasn’t a problem. I—I just wish I remembered.”
“I know.”
With a grim nod she started down the hall. At the door to the library she turned back in time to see the pocket doors slide shut. The action left her feeling …
She wasn’t sure what she was feeling. Frustrated. Lonely. Melancholy. Weary. Sorry—oh, yes. She was sorry that their marriage had ended, sorry she’d lost Ross, sorry she had to live through the present to get to the future. She wished she could take a nap and wake up in two hours and it would be spring, with the grass turning green, flowers starting to bloom, and both her body and her heart healed of their various aches. Life would be good then.
That afternoon it was merely sad.
It was late Friday afternoon, the end of a long, stressful week. The computer was printing the files that had come attached to Tom’s most recent e-mail, and the fax was receiving endless pages of a new contract, but Ross paid neither any attention. Slumped in his chair, he’d propped his feet on the credenza and was staring out the window, watching Maggie and the Dalton girls light new candles in the farolitos. They looked as if they were having fun.
He was certainly enjoying it.
Heavy clouds darkened the sky, making it seem later than five-thirty, and snow was falling in fat wet flakes. It was perfect weather, the girls had declared in the hallway earlier, for tonight’s horse-drawn wagon tour of Bethlehem. Though the prospect of spending a few hours in the cold didn’t exactly thrill Ross, he and Maggie were going. There was no way she could miss one of the town’s premiere Christmas events—preceded by a party at the Winchesters, another premiere event—and he wasn’t about to send her alone.
Outside, the girls had finished with the last farolitos, and now the three of them stood in the grass, heads tilted back, tongues stuck out. Catching snowflakes. He hadn’t seen Maggie do anything so young since …
The smile that had started to form faded. Since he’d begun demanding a certain standard of behavior from her. When he’d decided that his position required the perfect wife, he’d set out to mold her into that image, and she’d let him. By the time he’d realized that the old Maggie—the one who made him laugh, who made him happy, who loved him with all the passion she possessed—was perfect, it was too late.
Sometimes he wished for a second chance. She had given him so much, and he’d cost her so much. He wished for the opportunity to be the husband she wanted, to give her the children and the life she needed.
Other times he knew such chances were impossible. He could never be the husband she wanted. They had both changed too much. He couldn’t stop being who and what he was, and that man could never be happy with the life that would make her happy.
Could he?
The fax beeped, signaling that it’d printed the last page, but he didn’t reach for the stack of papers. Instead, he slid his feet to the floor, left his chair, and, after a stop by the closet, left the house.
“You need this,” he said, draping her coat over her shoulders. The sweater she wore was heavy and warm—and his, he realized after a closer look—but it didn’t provide enough protection against the snow.
Though it provided him with a hell of a jolt of lust. The sweater had been a birthday gift years ago. They’d had a quiet, intimate dinner at home, followed by his favorite cake. After urging him to make a wish and blow out the candles, she’d left the room to get his gift. She’d come back wearing this sweater and nothing else, and he’d gotten instantly hard. As he slid inside her, he’d asked, “How did you know what I wished for?” and she had merely laughed.
It hadn’t been a difficult guess. Back then they’d always wanted each other—anytime, anyplace. Hell, though he might have stopped loving her, he’d never stopped wanting her. He’d just lost the right to have her.
She looked at him with a smile that cut him off at the knees. “Isn’t it a gorgeous night?”
He couldn’t pull his gaze away. “Yes,” he agreed, but he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to. All he could see, all he could focus on, was her. She looked so damn touchable that his fingers curled into tight fists in an effort to resist the temptation. He failed though. Of its own accord his hand lifted. His fingers tucked a
stray strand of hair behind her ear. Her cheek was cold, but it sent a blast of heat through him.
“Hey, Mr. Ross.”
He was aware of an impatient tug on his jacket, but he didn’t respond. He couldn’t. He could only look at Maggie—and want.
“Mr. Ross, guess what?” Josie was insistent in her demand for his attention. It required greater strength than he would have expected to give it to her. “Aunt Emilie let us have our own fire-olitos, and me and Lannie take care of them all by ourself. And we get to stay up late tonight, ’cause we’re having an all-night party at Miss Agatha’s so Aunt Emilie and Uncle Nathan can have a night alone.” Pretending to hold someone in her arms, she scrunched up her face and made kissing noises, then laughed. “That’s how Aunt Emilie got our baby. Kasey at school said so, and she knows.”
Alanna tugged her sister’s jacket hood. “Babies don’t come from kissing, silly.”
“Uh-huh, they do. That’s why I’m not never gonna kiss any boy, not till I’m way growed up, like Miss Maggie.” Struck by a thought, she looked from Maggie to Ross, then back. “You guys don’t have a baby. Don’t you never kiss?”
Alanna’s tug was harder this time. “Remember what Aunt Emilie said about asking personal questions?”
“Not to. So … don’t you guys kiss?”
Maggie crouched in front of her. “Of course we kiss,” she said as naturally as if it were true.
“Then why don’t you have babies?”
“Your friend Kasey is a little misinformed. Babies don’t come from kissing. There’s a lot more to it than that.”
Thank God, Ross thought, or he and Maggie would have been in a world of trouble years ago.
Or maybe they might have been saved.
“Like what?”
“I think you need to ask your aunt Emilie that.”
Josie twined her arms around Maggie’s neck and swayed from side to side. “Oh, please tell me. Kasey thinks she knows everything because her dad’s a doctor, and if you tell me, then I can go to school and tell everyone else and they’ll know that she was wrong and she’ll be all mad. Please? Puh-leeeze?”
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