The Gift of Love

by Lori Foster

  The problem was, he wasn’t Keenan.

  “Hey.” Putting his arm around her waist, he kissed her forehead with soft lips and then gazed down at her with open appreciation, as though the fun could begin now that he had such a fine woman back by his side. “You want to dance again?”

  She hesitated, cursing her own ambivalence.

  Okay. So here was a sexy man who had his hands on her and thought she was special. Special enough to want to have sex with anyway. She waited for her belly to quiver, but it remained stubbornly unmoved by this masculine perfection.

  No surprise, really.

  It was hard to get turned on by Evan when she was stupid enough to be in love with Keenan. Keenan, the man who’d rejected her on more than one memorable occasion. Keenan, who couldn’t make it plainer that he wanted nothing to do with her, not unless he could back over her a couple of times with his specially modified car. Keenan, the man she’d never have even if she couldn’t stop wanting him.

  Man, she was an idiot. So much so that hot tears burned the backs of her eyes, putting her in danger of making a fool of herself in public.

  And then she caught herself.

  Not today, sister. No man was worth public tears. Not even Keenan.

  This was her good friend Lisa’s wedding reception, and Diana was here with an attractive man who wanted her. No way was she going to feel sorry for herself and let her doomed love for a moody quadriplegic ruin that. Tonight she was going to pull it together and have fun. Dammit.

  She widened her fake smile, blinked back her emotion, and slipped away from Evan. “I’m just going to run to the ladies’ room first.”

  Evan, good-natured as always, didn’t mind. “I’ll meet you back here.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  She dove into the crowd and headed for the bathroom, anxious to be alone long enough to get her game face firmly back in place. She’d just touch up her makeup and—

  Oh, no. She froze just inside the swinging door. The place was full of primping women with lipsticks, powder puffs, and God knew what—all standing in front of the mirrors. Even the little seating area was occupied.

  So much for that brilliant idea.

  Backing out of the bathroom, desperate now for any sort of sanctuary, just for a minute, she hurried down the hall away from the ballroom and tried the first door she came to. Hah! Unlocked! It let into a dimly lit great room of sorts, with bookshelves, more sofas and chairs, a roaring fire in the gas fireplace and—oh, no—the bride and groom locked in a vertical embrace over in the corner, looking like they were seconds away from consummating the marriage.

  Leave, girl. Just leave. Back out of the room and—

  Too late; they’d heard her. Breaking apart, Cruz and Lisa looked around with unfocused eyes and tried to catch their breath.

  The powers of speech failed them all, and they stared at each other for an excruciating beat or two. Awkward. This was what you might call an awkward moment.

  “Umm,” Diana began, fidgeting and stammering, her cheeks hot with embarrassment. “Sorry. I was just—”

  “It’s okay.” Cruz gave her a don’t-worry-about-it smile, wiping smeared lipstick off his mouth with his handkerchief in one hand and keeping the other slung low and possessive across his new wife’s hips. “We should be getting back anyway. They’ll be looking for us.”

  He tugged Lisa’s hand and they started toward the door, but Lisa, beautiful in her sleek white satin gown and veil draped over the crook of her arm, gave Diana a sharp look.

  “What’s wrong, Diana?”

  Oh, great. That dose of loving concern was sooo what she didn’t need right now. Just like that, all the tears she thought she’d conquered, or at least temporarily blinked into submission, welled anew.

  “Nothing,” she tried, her bottom lip trembling.

  Lisa didn’t look convinced, what with her crinkled brow and all. Apparently it took more than her own wedding reception to throw her off the trail of romantic trouble. Maybe she was part bloodhound. “It’s Keenan, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-oh.” Amusement and interest sparked to life in Cruz’s brown eyes. There was nothing he loved better than a fresh opportunity to tease Keenan about something. “What’s up?”

  Lord. Could this night get any worse? That’s all Diana needed: to worry the bride on her big night while simultaneously giving Cruz a reason to needle Keenan.

  Straightening her spine, she tried again. “Keenan and I had a little, ah, discussion a few minutes ago, but everything’s fine now, and—”

  Lisa’s shrewd eyes narrowed. “He’s jealous about your date, isn’t he? I knew it.”

  Before Diana could work up any sort of denial, the door swung open again, and the night did indeed get worse.

  Apparently all this talk about him had made his ears burn, because Keenan, looking grim and determined, his jaw tight, rolled into the room and studied their guilty faces.

  “Can I talk to Diana for a minute?” he asked after an excruciating pause.

  “No,” Diana said, but no one was listening to her.

  “Absolutely.” Lisa smiled, looking so delighted it was a wonder she didn’t twirl and skip her way out of the room. Tugging Cruz behind her—the groom was looking downright smug now, the light of mischief bright in his eyes—she paused only long enough to squeeze Diana’s arm and whisper in her ear.

  “Don’t give up on Keenan, okay? He’s crazy about you, even if he’s too stubborn to admit it. Just hang in there and—”

  “I can hear you,” Keenan said sourly.

  “Good.” Lisa was so full of gleeful triumph she all but levitated with it. “Because I’ll have a word or two for you in a minute, brother.”

  This pronouncement sucked a good fifty percent of the smugness from Cruz’s face, and his gaze flickered between Keenan and his new wife. “A quick word,” he told Lisa. “You’ll have a quick word with him. We’ve got some consummating to do, and we don’t have time—”

  The look Lisa shot her husband was pure desire in its most primitive form, so much so that Diana had to turn her head and Keenan cleared his throat.

  Cruz stilled, utterly fixated on his bride.

  “Oh, don’t worry.” Lisa gave him a thorough once-over filled with the promise of intense sensual delights that were still illegal in some states. “You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  It took Cruz a couple seconds to get his husky voice working again. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  The newlyweds left, taking all their sexual heat with them and leaving only a ringing silence that seemed to get worse with each creeping second.

  Diana recovered first. “Where’s Atticus?”

  “Playing with some of his fans in the ballroom. I gave him a few minutes off, so he’ll probably try to get his hands on more cake.”

  “Oh.” She took a step toward the door. “Well, you and I’ve already talked, so—”

  “Diana. Please.”

  She froze where she was, with one hand reaching for the door, because she just couldn’t walk out on him when he spoke to her with such intense urgency. But looking at him was another matter, so she didn’t do it. There was no way she could stare into those midnight eyes and feel nothing. She couldn’t see him sitting, so proud and handsome in his double-breasted tuxedo, so emotionally wounded, and not want him. It wasn’t in her.

  So she spoke to the closed door, wishing she could just leave right now.

  “You have two minutes,” she told him.

  “Sit down with me. Please.”

  He’d once mentioned that he hated always having to stare up at people from his chair, and she couldn’t blame him. His long legs were wasted now, thin beneath the fine wool of his trousers, but he’d been tall once. She hadn’t known him before his accident, but it must be hard to go from being one of the tallest people in the room to having even kids tower over him.

  So she sat, grudgingly, and folded her hands in her lap. “What is it?”
r />   He wheeled over until they were knee-to-knee. His words didn’t seem to want to come, and she kept quiet, refusing to make anything easy for him.

  God knew he’d never made anything easy for her.

  “You deserve the best out of life,” he said finally.

  The best. Huh. Yeah. She’d heard this before, many times. Maybe she could look at him after all.

  Staring him straight in the face, she mimed a yawn and checked her watch.

  Red blotches appeared on his cheeks, but he kept calm and repeated the same old stupid script. “I want you to be happy, Diana. You’d never be happy with me—”

  Wow. So now he was God, dictating her wants and needs to her from his almighty perch in that wheelchair. Wasn’t she lucky to have him to run her life for her?

  She had nothing to say to this. Why respond, anyway, when it was so fascinating to watch him throw everything and the kitchen sink at her—everything but the truth?

  “And I want you to find the right guy—”

  Okay. Enough was enough; she’d reached her bullshit quota for the night. “Have you got anything new for me—”

  Keenan floundered.

  “Or can you speed this up so I can get back to the reception while I’m still young and cute? I’ve heard it all before, and it’s pretty boring, frankly.”

  His brows lowered until they were nothing but heavy slashes over his eyes, as unmistakable a warning sign as any she’d ever seen. To his credit, though, he took the high road and kept waving that olive branch of peace.

  Too bad she wanted war.

  “Why are you making this so hard, Diana?” There was a touch of rising frustration in his voice. “I just want you to understand—”

  Oh, for God’s sake. She didn’t have time for this nonsense. “Understand what? That you’re a coward?”

  The C-word shut him up in a hurry. It hung in the air, reverberating between them, as ugly and devastating as she’d meant it to be. His fingers, already curled, tightened into fists in his lap, and that same tension ran up his arms until his shoulders squared off.

  “Don’t you call me a coward,” he said in a low voice.

  Oh, but she was just getting warmed up.

  “Don’t get me wrong.” She shrugged, so nonchalant they may have been talking about this morning’s rain. It was easy to remain calm while she twisted the knife, because he’d had this strong dose of tough love coming for months. And his blotchy color, a vivid red now, bordering on purple, told her she was hitting home.

  She was only sorry they hadn’t had this conversation sooner.

  “You have some courage. I know that.”

  “Some… courage?” His voice was strangled.

  “Well, you battled back after the car accident, right? You went through all that terrible physical therapy, and you rebuilt your life. Now you live on your own again. That’s not bad.”

  Keenan looked apoplectic now, his upper body and facial muscles so hard and tight with rage that a single touch might be enough to make him crumble to dust.

  She ticked off his accomplishments on her fingers, keeping her voice at a dismissive singsong that made him sound as though he’d done nothing more complex than learn the first half of the alphabet. “You can drive your own car, and you can play basketball with your wheelchair league, right, and you can enter your wheelchair marathons and earn all kinds of medals.”

  From out of nowhere, a white-hot rage swept over her, washing away the grim satisfaction she’d felt to finally say these things to him. For a minute, she was too upset to continue. He held her life in his hands, damn him, and he didn’t have the faintest idea what his rejection was doing to her.

  Her voice rose, pitching higher with her frustration and desperation, and she taunted him, going for his emotional jugular.

  “You’re a real marvel, aren’t you, Keenan? There’s nothing you won’t do with that chair, is there? I’ll even bet that if they set up a quadriplegics’ expedition to the top of Mount Everest, where you strap your wheelchair to your back and claw your way to the top of the mountain without oxygen, you’d be the first one to sign up for it, wouldn’t you? So, yeah, you have some”—she held up her thumb and forefinger, half an inch apart—“courage. I’ll give you that. Actually, I’ll give you more than that. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever met.” She paused. “Except when it comes to me.”

  He made a choked sound—of rage or anger, she couldn’t tell which.

  “Deep down where it counts, right here”—she reached out and, pointing her forefinger, jabbed him hard in the chest—“you’re a cow—”

  “Don’t you call me a coward,” he shouted, batting her arm away.

  She yelled, too, getting to her feet and into his face, beyond caring if they made a scene at this beautiful reception and had to be thrown out by security. “You are a coward! When it comes to me, you’re the biggest coward there is!”

  “Screw you.” Wheeling around her, he headed for the door. “I’m leav—”

  “Leaving?” She let out a single bark of laughter, as derisive as she could make it. “Go ahead, Keenan. That’s what cowards do in tricky situations, right? They run away, don’t they? Isn’t that what they teach in Coward 101?”

  A roar of rage rose up out of him, so powerful that she wondered if it could lift him out of that chair and propel him to his feet. Two slashing downward strokes of his arms had the chair spinning back toward her and she had to fight the urge to run and hide.

  “What do you want, Diana? What the hell do you want?”

  That was easy. “Tell me what you’re so afraid of. Please—”

  “I’m not afraid.” The way he snarled it, as though she’d insulted him, his manhood, his mother, and generations of his family going back to slave times, told her she’d hit a raw nerve. “I don’t know where you’re getting that.”

  Okay. Time to try another approach. “Fine. I want you to be honest for once. How would that be?”

  “I’m always—”

  “Don’t.” God. His audacity made her want to pull her hair out in frustration. Apparently no lie was too far-fetched and ridiculous to tell. “Don’t even try it. You’ve never been honest with me a day in your life.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, but his voice didn’t sound any too steady, and his gaze, so defiant a second ago, wavered.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  He stilled. They stared at each other, both knowing where this was going and what was next. They’d been headed for this conversation—this single moment—for months, if not years.

  “If you’re so honest all the time, tell me how you feel about me.”

  She waited and watched while all that bright color drained from his face. And the same Keenan she loved, the one who was so fiercely strong and who had resurrected his life, battling his way back from a devastating injury that would have killed a lesser man, hesitated. Then he lied.

  “You’re a wonderful friend,” he began, “but it’s nothing more than—”

  Diana wasn’t sure which was more insulting: the lie itself or the fact that he thought she was dumb enough to believe it. Either way, she’d had enough and didn’t plan to listen to another dishonest syllable.

  “Yeah, see—there’s that coward thing again. That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “I told you not to call me—”

  “Do you think I don’t see the way you look at me?” she cried, her desperation making her so shrill and agitated she felt like a wasp trapped in a jar. “Do you think I don’t notice? Do you think I’m too stupid to know when a man wants me? Is that it?”

  Keenan cursed and turned his head away, but it was too late. She’d seen the wheels turning in his mind and the subtle schooling of his features, as though he could get that horse back in the barn if only he kept his face blank enough.

  His plan apparently formulated, he met her gaze again. “You’re beautiful, Diana. You know that—”

  This wasn’t about her looks, and they both
knew it. Her pride whispered a warning, but her heart wouldn’t let her stop now. “I love you, Keenan—”

  “Don’t,” he said sharply.

  “Love you. ”Ignoring her skirts and heels, she dropped to her knees in front of him and grabbed hold of the arms of his chair. Now he was trapped with nowhere else to run and nowhere else to look. “What do you think you’re protecting me from?”

  Some of the fight seemed to go out of him while his eyes were heating up with that emotion he could never completely hide. Seeing the intensity there—the riveting focus on her and her alone in the world—gave her the last boost of courage she needed.

  And she reached out and touched him.

  The smooth skin of his jaw first, velvet over marble, warm and vital and more thrilling than anything she could begin to imagine. “Love you, Keenan.”

  He gasped, and she took that as encouragement.

  Leaning closer, she stroked her hands over his heavy arms and shoulders, ignoring the tuxedo’s fine fabric and searching for Keenan’s strength. When it wasn’t enough to feel the vigor in his biceps and forearms, she rubbed her cheek against his torso, which was hard and lean and thundering with his heartbeat. And here was the smell she craved, the one Evan didn’t have: clean soap, sporty deodorant, fresh linen, and warm skin.

  Wild now with the primitive thrill of doing this, something she’d wanted to do for so long—so long, God, so long—she eased lower, until she nuzzled his crotch, loving as much of him as she could, for now. His gasp deepened into a groan, and she looked up into his face so he could see her expression when she said this next part.

  And then, when he was staring down at her with hot eyes, glittering eyes, and she was staring up at him, letting all her need show on her face, she hugged his useless legs close to her heart.

  “I love everything about you,” she told him. “Everything.”

  Something broke free in his expression then, something joyous, bright, and uncontrollable even though he tried to blink it back and tamp it down. Breathing hard, he raised his clumsy fingers and stroked her face—the left side first, and then the right.

  His touch was gentle … so gentle … and she closed her eyes with the pleasure.