by Cindy Gerard
He stroked a hand over her hair. And did what was essential that he do. He catered to her needs and put his on hold.
“Let’s get you to bed before you catch a chill,” he whispered, and, shifting her in his arms rose and carried her into the house and up the stairs, the gown that was tangled around her hips trailing them like a shadow.
She was asleep before he laid her down on her white-on-white bed, where the covers were thrown back, where the sweet indentation of her body lingered on both the sheets and her pillow. He didn’t know whether to feel smug or cheated.
What he absolutely did feel was protective as he leaned over her and simply looked at her—the wild tangle of copper-gold curls trailing across the pillow, her pale, slim body languidly sated, her rose-pink nipples soft as velvet now.
She’d come apart for him. Eager and proud, curious and brave. The punch of desire hit him again. This time he was prepared for it. He’d had a week of practice. A week of holding back, holding off. He could go another night. Or as many as it took to make sure she was ready for him.
He couldn’t wait to take her up again, then take her down with him. But not tonight. Not as exhausted as she was. He knew that he hadn’t gotten much sleep the last week. He seriously doubted that she had, either.
So he bit back the need, curbed the desire. He looked longingly at the bed, at his beautiful sleeping wife, and knew that if he joined her there, he wouldn’t be able to leave her alone.
Tomorrow, he promised himself as he headed back downstairs to his bed on the sofa. Tomorrow they would talk. Tomorrow he would know what their future held.
Tomorrow he might even come up with an explanation for this indescribable warmth that clotted his chest when he looked at her and made him want to believe that maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Sara had been wrong.
Maybe…just maybe, he had the capability of being something more to a woman than just there.
Seven
Ellie had been awake since sunup. She’d lain in her bed and tried to make sense of why Lee wasn’t with her. It had been incredible. Out on the porch, when he’d kissed her, and touched her. It had been so…wonderful.
And then he’d left her. Asleep in her bed. Alone again.
When all of her reasoning pointed back in the same direction, she swallowed her pride, got dressed for church and went downstairs.
She’d already fried the bacon and the pancake batter was ready for the griddle when she heard him walk softly into the kitchen. She tried not to stiffen. Tried not to let the hurt show. But he must have sensed it, anyway.
“Ellie?”
His voice was soft behind her. She lowered her head, then immediately lifted her chin and reached for the bowl of batter. She would not let him see her humiliation.
“Good morning,” she said brightly, and shot a quick smile over her shoulder.
That was a mistake. He was all sleep rumpled—pillow creases dented his stubbled cheek, and his hair was beautifully mussed. His shirt hung open; his feet were bare. Seeing him that way, still warm from his bed on the couch when he should have been warm from her bed, was a grim reminder of how much of him she didn’t have, how much she might never have.
She closed her mind to the picture and its message. “I thought you were going to sleep all morning. Church isn’t for a couple of hours yet so I made pancakes. I can scramble some eggs if—”
“Ellie.” His hand on her shoulders stopped her forced, cheery banter. “Look at me.”
She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see the pity or regret or distaste or whatever it was he was feeling this morning. But she forced herself. She pasted on a smile, met his dark scowl.
And waited with her heart in her throat.
“Ellie, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”
“You feeling okay?”
“I feel fine.”
A long moment passed. “But you’re upset,” he finally decided.
She drew a bracing breath. “I’m not upset. Why would I be upset?” She heard the bite in her reply. Was sorry she hadn’t been able to curb it. Or maybe not. Maybe she didn’t just want to roll over and play the I’m-fine-don’t-concern-yourself-with-me game. Maybe she wanted to hurt him, the way he had hurt her.
“Why would I be upset?” she repeated, letting loose with some of the fire that had been building in her belly. Let him see what he’d done to her. Let him deal with it.
Lee watched her warily. He’d expected that she might feel self-conscious this morning. He’d expected she might feel shy. He hadn’t expected anger. And she was angry. Beyond angry.
He walked to the cupboard, snagged a mug from the shelf and poured a cup of coffee. He needed a hit of caffeine to help clear his head. He hadn’t slept much last night. He glanced at her. At her fever-bright eyes that were agitated and narrowed in accusation and in complete contrast to the serene pastels of her pretty flowing dress that made him think of her flower garden of a bedroom.
He figured that he knew what this was all about. He’d made another major mistake last night. He’d known it then, was sure of it now. He should have trusted his instincts. He should have walked away from her before…well, by the looks of her, before he’d taken her somewhere she wasn’t prepared to go, let alone to deal with in the cool clear light of morning.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. When she just glared at him, her eyes filled with hurt and anger and a humiliation that he’d put there, he set aside the coffee and went to her.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me.” She threw her arms wide, bolting away from his outstretched arms. “Don’t touch me like I’m something that will break.”
He stopped in his tracks, suddenly confused. He was low enough on sleep and high enough on sexual frustration that a healthy bite of anger of his own shot out before he could rein it in. “I don’t recall touching you that way last night,” he said carefully, and felt an unwelcome twinge of satisfaction when her cheeks flamed.
“No. Oh, no. Last night…last night for a moment you forgot, didn’t you? You forgot who I was and what I was, and you touched me like a woman.”
He watched her with a frown, not at all sure now where this was coming from. “Do you want me to be sorry about that? Am I supposed to be sorry for kissing you?”
“Aren’t you? Aren’t you sorry? Sorry about that and about agreeing to this…this arrangement of a marriage?”
There were tears now. Big and bright and brimming and winning the battle with her pride. He didn’t know what to say to her. She, however, had plenty to say.
“It’s not that I expect you to…to love me. Not…not right away. But I thought…last night…I thought you at least wanted me. But you don’t see me as anything but an obligation, do you? And why wouldn’t you? That’s all I am. That’s all I’ve ever been.”
“Ellie—”
“Don’t! Do not talk to me like I’m a child. I am a woman. And for better or worse, I am your wife!” Violet eyes, wild with hurt and anger, glared him. Then, with a frustrated kitten’s roar, she made a small, tight fist and popped him in the chest.
She roared again when he just stood there, unfazed by the physical blow but stunned by the fury and passion that had prompted it.
“I am supposed to be your partner, not your charge! And I have epilepsy, not the plague. You can’t catch it. If it scares you or repulses you, I’m sorry. I can’t control what you feel. I can’t control the disease. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be your wife if you would just give me the chance.”
His head was swimming—at the depth of her anger—at the source of the pain that had prompted someone so gentle and kind to physically strike out. At the words she’d fired at him like bullets. One word in particular. She thought she repulsed him?
While he was still reeling, she tugged off her apron, threw it in his general direction and ran out the kitchen door.
Tossing the apron aside, he turned off the burners on the stove and stormed after her, w
incing his way across the gravel on bare feet and followed her to the barn.
It was quiet as he shouldered through the door and eased inside. It was also dark. His eyes adjusted slowly until he found her there, a spot of spring in her pretty dress as she pressed her face against Bud’s neck and let the tears flow.
He was leery of touching her so he stood by her side, one hand on the big gelding’s withers. “Ellie…you don’t repulse me. You so don’t repulse me. I want you. With every breath I draw, I want you.”
She didn’t look at him. And only after a very long, doubtful silence, did she quietly ask, “Then why? Why did you…why did you do that to me last night?”
He watched her carefully before he finally spoke and even then he felt totally out of sync with the workings of her mind. “I thought you liked it. I thought you liked it when I touched you.”
“I did. I…I did,” she finished softly, her voice muffled against Bud’s neck. “But then…then you left me. Alone again. You gave me something…something that made me feel wonderful and powerful and…and strong. And then you took it away when you wouldn’t let me give it back to you.”
He closed his eyes, pressed his forehead against the hand he’d formed into a fist on Bud’s broad neck as the light finally dawned. “Baby, that’s not why I left. You were exhausted. It was late. I didn’t want to take advantage.” How could he say this without making matters worse? “I didn’t want to take you further than you were prepared to go.”
“So you made a decision. For my benefit.” The steel was back in her voice. So was the heat.
“Yes,” he said carefully.
He knew he’d been hung by his own rope even before she quietly murmured, “Like my keeper.”
He drew in a deep breath, let it out and bit the bullet. “Like someone who cares about you. I see now that I was wrong to take that choice away from you.
“Ellie, please look at me.” He waited for her to do just that, and when she finally did, he saw how deep his error in judgment had cut her. “I’m on shaky ground here. I’m not doing a very good job of…” he trailed off, searching for the words, but before he found them, she found some for him.
“Of taking care of me.”
“Yes,” he admitted again even though he knew it might set her off. “Of taking care of you. It’s not a bad thing. I want to take care of you.”
“I thought we agreed to take care of each other.”
Okay. So he’d sold her short on that one, too. “You’re right. Again. We did agree to take care of each other. But I can’t…hell.” He dragged a hand roughly through his hair, felt the ground he’d gained shift, like sand, beneath his feet and settled himself down.
“I want to make love to you,” he said candidly and saw her reaction through her soulful, searching eyes. “After last night I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.
“But I don’t want to hurt you,” he added, trying to make her understand. “I don’t ever want to put you in a position where I could hurt you.”
She let out a deep breath, sectioned off a small handful of Bud’s mane and started absently working it with her hands. “I get so tired of being a…consideration,” she said at last as she began the intricate but automatic process of making a braid. “I just want to be seen as a person—not a person with a problem.”
He’d hurt her again but he’d be damned if he’d apologize. “Would you rather I didn’t care? Would you rather I didn’t consider your health?”
Another long, weary sigh. “I’d rather this wasn’t a part of me. But it is.”
The long silence that followed underscored the fact that it was his wish too. That was the bottom line, and they both knew it as she forked her fingers through the braid she’d just completed and smoothed it back as it had been. Then she turned to him with those beautiful, troubled eyes.
“You can’t fix me,” she said at last. “Even though you want to.”
He frowned. “Ellie, no—”
“You think I don’t see what you’ve been doing? Every day since you’ve been here, you’ve charged around like a man possessed. Fixing this. Fixing that. But you can’t fix me, Lee,” she repeated, daring him to deny the truth of her conclusion.
He had to look away. It was true. That’s exactly what he’d wanted to do—and she’d figured it out before he had. He’d wanted to fix what he had control over because he had no control over what the epilepsy did to her. Suddenly he was ashamed.
“You say you don’t want to hurt me? Then you need to accept me. As I am. The epilepsy is part of me. It’s not going away. Ever.”
He drew in a weary breath, let it out, met her eyes. “Then help me understand,” he said gently. “Help me know what you deal with.”
“So you’ll know how to take care of me,” she concluded, driving her point home with a bite that didn’t quite rally what she’d lost of her pride.
“Yes,” he said, honestly. “But more than that. I want to know. I want to know you better. For all the reasons you just said. The epilepsy is part of you. I’m your husband. That makes it part of me.
“Help me, Ellie. Help me understand so I don’t go on hurting you.”
He was asking a lot of her. He knew it; so did she.
When she turned to him, it wasn’t so much with acceptance as it was with defeat. He saw in her eyes, her sad, brave eyes that she’d reconciled herself to the idea that it was the only way they could start getting past this. Reconciled, that’s all.
He held out his hand, determined that she would never be sorry for anything she shared with him.
After what seemed like an eternity, she reached out, took his hand.
He didn’t feel the strength in her hand today, only the reluctance that trembled through her. And the fear of rejection that she’d lived with too long and that he promised himself she would never feel again. Not from him.
He led her back to the house. Sat down with her on his lap in the big wicker chair on the front porch. And he just held her that way and rocked her until, with the spring breeze humming through her wind chimes, she slowly, and with grim determination, started telling him things she’d never told another living soul.
They were late for church. He couldn’t help but smile as one of Clare’s favorite platitudes came to mind.
“Timing’s not as important as presence. Showing up’s what counts, not being early or late, but just being.”
Being, however, was different from belonging. Lee had never belonged. Every time he stepped through the double, arched doorway of the Sundown Congregational Church, he expected to hear the creak and groan of the roof giving way and falling in on his head—if for no other reason than the shock of seeing him there.
As a ten-year-old boy he’d never been inside a church until Will and Clare had dragged him here, practically kicking and screaming. He still felt that odd sense of a benevolent but judgmental presence, a supreme power, whenever he sat before the altar and the music swelled out of the ancient organ and rang out over the congregation.
Hard as Clare had tried, he still considered himself more sinner than saint. Except for attending Clare’s and then Will’s funeral and his own wedding ceremony last week, he’d seldom found his way inside of any church in the past several years. Even so, there were some things he hadn’t forgotten—like the peace that settled over him as he walked Ellie toward the Shiloh family pew.
Beside him she was quiet, just as she’d been quiet on the ride to town. He understood why. He’d been quiet, too. He had a lot to think about. And he had a big reason to hope that Doc Lundstrum could fill in some of the blanks that Ellie had left empty.
Starting today he wanted to be more to her than he had been. Because he understood now. He understood that he wasn’t the only one who felt as if they had never belonged.
He wanted to be more than her protector; he wanted to be things he still couldn’t be for her, not through any failing of hers but because there were some things he still wasn’t capable of. Like
the fairy-tale love she wanted and deserved.
But he could be her husband. He wanted to be her husband. Not because he was bound by duty, he’d realized with no small measure of surprise. But because he wanted to be someone important to her. Because she deserved to have someone who wanted to be important to her.
And he wanted to make love to her. He wanted it to be tonight.
The sun was clear and high as they walked outside after the service and people broke off into little pockets of conversation. Lee stood by himself, a little surprised that Peg Lathrop had practically attacked Ellie and pulled her aside. The two of them were locked in conversation at the edge of the aspen grove that flanked the church on three sides. Peg’s little girl, a five-year-old tomboy with blond braids and a grass stain on the knee of her Sunday school dress, was busy playing on the swing set that was part of the city park playground adjacent to the church grounds.
Lee stood on the bottom step, a hand in the pocket of his suit pants, and squinted against the sun that was only an hour away from noon.
“How’s it going, young man?”
He turned to see Doc’s bushy brows pinched together in question and breathed a sign of relief. Cutting a look toward Ellie and Peg and seeing that they were still deep in conversation, he steered Doc aside.
“You got a minute?” he asked Doc, but didn’t wait for confirmation as he maneuvered him toward the corner of the church where they could have some privacy.
“What’s on your mind, son?” Doc asked.
“We need to have that talk now.”
Doc drummed his blunt-tipped fingers over his robust belly that was covered in a crisp white dress shirt and a slim paisley print tie. “Well now. It’s about time. It sure is about time.”
Later that afternoon Lee sat on the ridge above the valley that overlooked Shiloh. Bud shifted beneath him, the saddle leather creaking as the old gelding resettled his weight.
Below, in the house by herself, Lee knew that Ellie was wondering. Wondering and waiting and reading a hundred different messages into his distance and his silence.