Cherish

by Sherryl Woods

  “Let’s just run away, Brandon,” she coaxed. “There’s no need for a ceremony. We needn’t worry about shocking anyone in this day and age.”

  His hands fell away from her face. His eyes turned serious. “Do you think our children would be happier to see us having an affair than they would be seeing us married? I doubt it. Besides, I can’t bear the thought of waking up some morning to discover you’ve vanished during the night. I want a real commitment this time, Lizzy. I won’t settle for less.”

  “I can’t give you that. I was never as brave or as strong as you, Brandon. I don’t take risks.”

  “But there’s no risk involved. Can’t you see that? After all these years our feelings haven’t changed. That should tell you how right they are. We’ve cherished them in our hearts. Not that either of us shortchanged the people we married.” He tapped his chest. “But here, where it counts, we’ve never forgotten.”

  “Our feelings aren’t the only ones that count anymore. We have families to consider.”

  “Dammit, Lizzy, you’re thinking up excuses, not reasons.”

  “No,” she said gently. “Your family is every bit as important to you as mine is to me. Neither of us could ever knowingly do something that would bring them unhappiness or pain.”

  “Lizzy, you’re not making sense. How could our happiness cause them pain?”

  She couldn’t explain, no matter how badly she wanted to erase the confusion and hurt in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Brandon,” she whispered, fighting to hide the tears that threatened as she finalized the decision she should have made days earlier. “I’m going home in the morning. Alone.”

  He backed away from her then, and his expression turned colder than she’d ever seen it before. “I won’t chase after you again, Lizzy.”

  She felt his anguish as deeply as her own. “I know,” she said in a voice filled with regret. “Perhaps you should call a taxi to take me back to the hotel. We’ll say our goodbyes here, just as we did the first time.”

  “No. I brought you here. I’ll take you back,” he said with stiff politeness.

  “Really, it’s not necessary.”

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “It is.”

  The drive to the hotel was made in silence. It was colder by far in the car than it was outdoors. Elizabeth felt as if her heart had frozen inside her. She was certain she would never feel anything as magnificent as Brandon’s caring again. She was trading love for peace of mind, and at the moment it seemed to be a lopsided exchange all the way around.

  * * *

  Brandon wondered how the devil things had gone so wrong again. Day after day, he’d seen the way Lizzy looked at him. He’d felt her pulse quicken at his touch, felt her flesh warm. Whatever the real explanation for her withdrawal, he knew he hadn’t heard it yet. Not that she was lying. But she definitely wasn’t telling him the whole truth.

  He was a proud man, though. He wouldn’t chase after her like some lovesick adolescent. If she couldn’t be honest, if she couldn’t trust him with the truth, then perhaps he’d been wrong all along about the depth of her feelings.

  Perhaps it was just as well to discover now that there was no trust between them. They’d lost it over those damned letters decades back and nothing that had happened in the past few days had helped them to recapture it.

  Maybe he’d fooled himself that what they’d once shared had been deeper and more meaningful than anything he’d experienced before or since. Maybe he’d simply been making a desperate, last grab for what had turned out to be no more than an illusion. Maybe love and marriage weren’t even possible at his age. Perhaps he should be willing to settle for the fleeting companionship Lizzy offered. There were so damn many maybes, and so few solid answers.

  Despite Lizzy’s objections, Brandon turned the car over to the valet at the hotel and followed her inside. In front of the elevator he studied her and tried to convince himself that he’d been wrong about everything, but his heart ached with a real sense of loss. He might have tracked her down on impulse, but he’d kept her in Boston because she’d engaged his heart as no other woman ever had. He couldn’t explain it, it just was—like the rising of the sun or the pull of the tides.

  He brushed a wisp of hair back from her cheek and felt her tremble. His gaze caught hers and held them spellbound. Her lips parted on a soft sigh that could have been either pleasure or regret.

  “I’ve spent the whole drive over here trying to convince myself that I’m wrong about us,” he said finally, his knuckles grazing her soft cheek. “But I’d be a liar if I told you I believed it. There’s a bond between us, Lizzy, one I can’t deny. Can you?”

  Her hand reached up and covered his. “No,” she said. “I can’t deny that.”

  “Then why won’t you marry me?”

  “I can’t,” she said with stubborn finality, slipping away from his touch.

  “I won’t make it easy for you to walk away,” he warned, just before he pulled her into his arms and brought his mouth down to cover hers.

  Oblivious to everything except the woman melting in his embrace, Brandon plundered. It wasn’t a kiss meant just to remind. It was meant to brand. It was a hot, hungry claiming of a kind he’d nearly forgotten until Lizzy had come back into his life.

  Her scent, like that of spring rain and sweetest flowers, surrounded them. Her skin was petal soft, her lips moist and inviting after that first shocked instant when his tongue had invaded.

  Despite its urgency, the kiss should have been the end of it, but it brought too many provocative memories, too many seductive images of another time, another place. His pulse bucked like a young man’s, as it had on that single splendid night he and Lizzy had shared.

  “Let me come to your room,” he whispered in a voice husky with desire. “If nothing else, let me hold you through this one last night.” The words were an echo of a long-ago plea and he waited just as anxiously for her response. “Don’t deny us that,” he coaxed.

  “Sometimes I wonder how I ever denied you anything,” she said ruefully. She slid her hand into his. “One night, Brandon. I suppose there’s no harm in grabbing that much happiness.”

  The elevator ride was the longest he’d ever taken. He couldn’t stop looking at Lizzy, with her cheeks flushed with color and her eyes bright with anticipation. She looked every bit as beautiful tonight as she had as a girl, and he wanted her in his arms with the same aching urgency. Since Grace had died, he’d thought he would never again experience this fire in his blood, but it pulsed now with a demanding roar.

  In Lizzy’s room, the maid had turned down the expensive covers on the queen-size bed. A foil-wrapped candy was on each pillow. Light from the hall spilled in, until Brandon slowly shut the door behind them, leaving them in shadows.

  He reached for the light, but Lizzy stayed his hand. “No,” she whispered. “I want you to remember me the way I was, not the way I am now.”

  He touched her cheek in a gesture meant to reassure. “You will always be beautiful in my eyes. Time could never change that.”

  “Spoken like a true romantic,” she said with a nervous laugh. “But I’d rather not take any chances.”

  “We don’t have to go through with this,” he said, cursing the sense of honor that demanded he offer to stop right now.

  He heard her intake of breath and felt his own go still as he waited for her decision.

  “I want you to hold me again,” she said finally and his breath eased out in a soft sigh of relief.

  A lifetime of marriage hadn’t taught him enough patience to go as slowly as he knew he needed to tonight. He sensed that any moment Lizzy would panic and change her mind, unless he claimed her with only the tenderest of touches, the gentlest of words.

  In the shadowy darkness Brandon pulled Lizzy into his arms and touched his lips to hers again. This time he allowed himself the delight of savoring, the slow exploration of tastes and textures. His senses exploded with a clash of sweet, poignant memory and
glorious reality. As slowly and inevitably as the passage of time, he felt her hesitancy become bold desire.

  And still he moved cautiously, allowing the weight of her breast to fill his hand, allowing his fingers to skim lightly over the sensitive nipple that had peaked despite layers of fabric. She moaned at the teasing, eyes closed as she gave herself up to his caresses.

  “You’re so responsive,” he murmured. “Sometimes I ached to experience that again and I envied the man who’d replaced me in your life.”

  “I never expected to feel like this again,” she admitted, meeting his gaze. “Thank you for that.”

  “No,” he whispered. “Don’t thank me. Just love me as you did that night.”

  Each touch after that became an echo of one that had gone before. Their bodies responded in harmony, as if they’d been made to fit together. Brandon didn’t feel old in Lizzy’s embrace. He felt rejuvenated, more passionate than ever before, more determined than ever not to sacrifice what they had found.

  He did everything he could to see that she felt the same. The woman who came apart in his arms, the woman whose tears spilled onto his burning flesh was as spirited and as passionate as the one he’d held decades earlier.

  Experience and time had taught them to be bolder, more demanding lovers. Love had taught them to give as much as they received.

  As they lay in each other’s arms, exhausted, sated, Brandon thought he had never known such joy or peace of mind. His fingers skimmed across her flesh, then halted at the locket that lay between her breasts. He heard her breath catch as he traced the shape and realized then that she was wearing the one piece of jewelry she had accepted from him years before.

  “Why would you still have this, if you didn’t care?” he murmured.

  “I never said I didn’t care.”

  “Have you always worn it?”

  “No.”

  “But you did save it,” he said in what sounded like an accusation. “Is my picture still inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn’t that tell you something, Lizzy? You can’t mean to walk away from this,” he said finally. “You can’t.”

  He felt another hot tear spill onto his chest, and he propped himself up on one elbow to gaze down at the woman in his arms. “Why are you crying?” he asked, wiping away the tears.

  “Because you’re wrong,” she whispered in a voice that broke. “I must walk away.”

  Though she seemed to choking back a sob, there was no mistaking the stubborn finality in her eyes. Brandon felt his heart grow cold. “You mean that, don’t you?”

  She nodded, not looking at him. Then she lifted her gaze to his and said, “But it will break my heart.”

  Chapter Nine

  There were times over the next few days when Brandon wondered how he’d ever gotten home from Lizzy’s hotel that night. He’d risked everything on the hope that once they had made love again she would never walk away.

  He should have known better. If she hadn’t consented to marry him when they’d been wildly in love in their teens and she’d been an innocent virgin, she would never give in so easily now.

  She had always been far stronger than he’d realized, perhaps even than she herself realized. Whatever was driving her back to California was not something he knew how to combat. She’d allowed him a peek inside her heart, but he knew nothing of her soul. She’d kept that part of herself private—a secret she wouldn’t share, even with him. He’d left her room feeling a depth of sorrow and regret that matched the grieving he’d done for Grace and had hoped never to experience again.

  Despite that, he called in the morning, intending one last-ditch attempt to persuade her to stay or, at the very least, to wrench a truthful explanation from her. But she had left already, without a note, without a goodbye.

  Brandon thought back to another time when Lizzy had refused him in much the same way. Perhaps he’d been naive to expect a seventeen-year-old girl to make a lifetime commitment to a man she’d known only days. Yet he’d known in a matter of minutes that she had brought an inexplicable, heart-stopping excitement into his life.

  Because he hadn’t considered himself a man prone to sentiment at that time, he’d been stunned to learn that he was capable of such deep emotions. The discovery was especially unsettling since only moments before, he’d been anticipating the hero’s welcome that would await him after the war and wondering how many women it might allow him to charm into his bed. In the blink of an eye an encounter with a dazzling, barefooted girl had changed all that. He’d been able to imagine no one in his life except Lizzy.

  Up until the moment when she’d turned down his proposal on the eve of his departure for England, he’d been convinced she’d felt the same rare magic. Nothing she’d said back then had made a bit of sense, either. That’s when he’d first realized that Lizzy had a stubbornness that matched his own. It had made her all the more appealing.

  But that was then and this was now. All he felt now was anger and betrayal. Brandon swore he would never give her the chance to hurt him again. There would be no flood of flowers, no Belgian chocolates, no pleas, no coaxing. She had made her choice, for whatever reason, and he would honor it. He’d grown far too weary of challenges.

  Instead Brandon ranted and raved at everyone else, making their lives a living hell. He dropped his plans to retire, offering no explanation. He filled up the lonely hours of each and every evening with work, littering Kevin’s desk and Jason’s with the memos he spent the night writing. When Sammy came around, eager to learn more about Halloran textiles, Brandon even chased him off with his foul temper.

  The next day at the plant he overheard Sammy telling Dana about the encounter.

  “Something’s wrong with Grandpa Brandon,” Sammy said, clearly worried. “He wouldn’t even talk about that new silk stuff when I asked him. You think maybe he’s sick?”

  Just out of sight, Brandon listened in dismay, knowing he owed the boy an apology. Aside from Dana, Sammy hadn’t had a lot of people in his life he could count on. Brandon considered himself lucky to be one of them. Now, because of his own bleak outlook, he was letting Sammy down, and Dana was put in the awkward position of trying to make excuses for him.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean to cut you off,” she said. “I have a pretty good idea what’s troubling him, and it doesn’t have anything to do with you. This moping around has gone on long enough, though. I intend to talk to him.”

  Guilty over having eavesdropped, and guiltier yet over the way he’d yelled at Sammy to leave him be, Brandon went back to his office and tried to figure out how the devil he was going to get his life in order before everyone around him formed a lynch mob.

  He was prowling around his office when Dana sashayed in. She looked as if she were just itching for a fight. She ignored his forbidding scowl and settled into the chair opposite his desk. It was obvious she had no intention of being scared off, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

  “What do you want?” he grumbled in a tone meant to intimidate. He stood towering over her as he asked.

  “The truth,” she said without blanching the way he’d have liked.

  “About what?”

  “Whatever’s bugging you.”

  “Who says anything is bugging me?”

  “Are you suggesting old age has suddenly made you crotchety?”

  “Could be,” he said, though he was suddenly fighting an unexpected grin. She was a tough one, all right. Just like Lizzy, he thought before he could stop himself. He moved to the window and stared out at the dreary April day that mirrored his mood.

  “You weren’t acting old when I saw you dancing a couple of weeks back,” she commented idly. “I believe that was the lambada you and Elizabeth were trying.”

  Surprise and dismay left Brandon openmouthed. He turned to glower at her. “You were spying on me?”

  “I was not,” she retorted emphatically. “I stopped over to pick up that baby cradle you told me was in the attic
. Mrs. Farnsworth let me in and said you’d gone out for the evening. I didn’t even know you’d come home until I was on my way out. I started to say hello and then I realized you weren’t alone.”

  “So you spied,” he repeated.

  She grinned. “Call it whatever you want. It was pretty interesting stuff. I didn’t stick around for the finale, though. I left when things started heating up.”

  “Thank goodness for small favors.”

  “You still haven’t said—is she the reason you’ve been in this funk? Has Elizabeth gone back to California?”

  He considered lying to protect his privacy, then didn’t see the use of it. Dana was too smart to buy a small fib, and he had too much integrity to offer a blatant lie. She’d obviously figured it out, anyway.

  “Yes,” he muttered finally.

  “When do you plan to visit her?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “She won’t have it.”

  “Why?” she asked, sounding every bit as astonished and confused as he felt.

  Relieved to have someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t likely to laugh in his face or to make judgments, he cleared a spot on the sofa, tumbling bolts of fabric onto the floor, and sat down. Then he told Dana the whole sad story—at least as much as he understood of it.

  “She said no,” he concluded. “Again.”

  “And you’re just giving up,” she retorted in a tone that was part disbelief, part accusation. “Again.”

  “No,” he said, but further denial died on his lips. “I can’t go chasing all over the countryside for her.”

  “I don’t see why not. You were planning to chase all over the world with her. Why not start in California?”

  “I won’t settle for less than marriage this time and she won’t hear of that.”

  “Then I guess you’ll just have to be more persuasive. Lord knows, you didn’t give up on Jason and me or on Lacey and Kevin,” she said. “You know what your trouble is? You’re too used to getting your own way without a fight. Maybe this Lizzy of yours is smarter than you think. Maybe she sees that it’ll do you good to have to work for something for a change. Maybe she needs to know she’s worth fighting for this time.”