by Andrews, Amy
“Come on…love is a risk. It always is. None of us is guaranteed a long life. But love takes courage. Where would Josie and I be if we hadn’t taken a risk?”
She shut her eyes again. It wasn’t the same thing. Death fucked up everything. “Don’t you think…I feel like it’s a …betrayal…of Ben. It’s not like he buggered off and left me. Or beat me. Or had affairs. He was…taken from me.”
“Do you honestly think that Ben would have wanted you to stay married to his memory forever? That he wouldn’t have wanted you to live a full and happy life?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, Sal,” Mack insisted, his words so calm and matter-of-fact. “Deep down you do. And even if you don’t, I do. The Ben I knew would have wanted you to be happy.”
Sal shook her head. She didn’t know. And she was so damn tired of thinking about it.
“Sal?”
“Yeah. I’m still here.”
“Promise me you’ll think about it, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Sal.” Mack used his bossy older brother voice.
She rolled her eyes. “I promise.”
“You know I’m going to nag you every day, right? And when I’m not, you can bet Josie and Gemma will join in. And it’ll only get worse when we come home in two weeks.”
Sal had no doubt. She laughed. Actually laughed. “Yeah, yeah.”
He laughed, too. “Good. Now go and do something about that man—big brother orders.” A snappy retort came to her lips, but there was nothing but dial tone in her ear. Sal glared at the phone. It was all right for Mr. Loved-Up.
Sometimes big brothers sucked.
Chapter Sixteen
Sal hadn’t had any conscious thought where she was headed when she’d fled work in the car, but she wasn’t surprised when she ended up at the cemetery. Right now, it seemed like the most logical place in the world to be.
Mack’s phone call had obviously gotten her thinking, whether she wanted to or not. The quiet bushland setting was the same as always—hushed and tranquil. She knew the exact number of steps it took to get to the plot—seventy-eight—and she took each one with a heavy heart. The single tombstone stood as it always had, the sleek black marble flashy compared to the simple inscription.
Ben Richards 21. Zelda (Zel) Richards, not yet born.
Forever in her father’s arms.
She hadn’t visited in a long time, and she was surprised at how well-kept it was—obviously the groundskeeper did a good job. She looked down at the headstone, not wanting to believe, as some did, that everything once important to her could be encapsulated in a tiny square of earth.
Surely Ben and Zel were inside her?
“I’m sorry I haven’t been for a while,” she said. There was no answering invective from the grave. Just the calm call of a bush bird and the lazy drone of insects.
“I think…I’ve found someone, Ben.” Sal swished a fly away from her face. “He loves me and…it’s possible that I might…love him back. I don’t know…I can’t stop thinking about him and I want to be with him all the time, the same way I felt when I first met you. And he’s put up with all my crap, and God knows, I’ve pushed him. Hard. Really hard. And when I asked him to leave, he left. It wasn’t fair of me. He didn’t want to, I know he didn’t. But he did. Because I asked him to. But…then there’s you, and there’s a part of me that can’t help feeling like I’m…betraying you. And Zel. Turing my back on you.”
She stared down at the silent marble, feeling stupid but purposeful all at the same time.
“I was nearly in another accident a couple of weeks ago. With him. With Doyle,” she said. “It was close, Ben. My whole bloody life flashed before my eyes. Not like our accident—we didn’t even see that damn truck until it was practically on top of us. But you know what I realized that night with Doyle? That I was beginning to have feelings for him and that I could so easily have lost him in that accident if things had been different and I don’t know if I could recover from something like that again. I’m so tired of feeling sad all the time.”
Sal stared at the grave for long minutes, the hot November sun belting down on her shoulders, warming the scrub top. No message was forthcoming. No thunderclap. No divine voice from the heavens. Just Mack’s voice.
The Ben I knew would have wanted you to be happy.
And she knew he was right. Ben had loved her. He’d loved life and embraced it fully. He’d have wanted her to find love and peace and joy again, just as she would have wanted the same for him had she been killed in the car that day.
She didn’t know much but she knew that.
That and she loved Doyle.
…
Sal braced herself as she opened the door to the apartment. She didn’t know what she was going to do next, but she knew she had to act—now. If she gave herself too long to think, her doubts and fears would take over again, and they were strong bastards. But she was tired of being ruled by them. It was scary to think she’d fallen for Doyle. She’d vowed never to open herself up to that kind of hurt again, to rely on a man emotionally again. But it hurt even more thinking of her life without him.
Love took courage.
That’s what Mack had told her, and at the moment she felt like David about to stand in front of Goliath.
A rock the size of a boulder sank to the bottom of her stomach, anchoring itself in a swirling mass of dread. She picked up her phone and dialed his number, her hands shaking. It went to voicemail. She dialed again. Same thing. She sent him a text.
We need to talk.
Fifteen minutes later, he still hadn’t replied. She sent him a dozen more over the course of the next hour. She knew he’d received them—his phone was never far from his side.
By the end of the second hour, she was desperate and flew downstairs to raid his personnel file—maybe his sister was down as a next-of-kin contact?
Bingo!
Sal didn’t hesitate ringing the number listed, her heart doing a funny little giddy-up in her chest. She knew she was breaking all kinds of confidentiality and workplace rules, but she didn’t care.
She hadn’t loved that often in her life. The one time she had, it had ended tragically, and she was damned if she was going to let this one be equally tragic because she blew her chances, too used to existing to take a chance on living. Maybe it’d end badly anyway, but maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t, and they’d still be together when they were old and gray. Like his parents. Like hers.
“Hello?”
“Oh, hi…Abi, it’s Sal. Sally Kennedy. Gemma mentioned something about Doyle staying there?”
There was a pause on the end of the phone, some muffled talking. “Ah…yes,” she said eventually. “But…I don’t think he wants to talk to you. I’m sorry.”
“I know. But please,” Sal all but begged. “I screwed up.”
“Apparently.”
“If I could just speak with him for a quick moment to tell him…to explain.”
More muffled voices. “I’m sorry, Sal. He doesn’t want to talk to you. And he can be a stubborn son of a bitch.”
Sal smiled despite the huge cavern breaking open inside her. “Tell him I’m asking nicely.”
Sal tried to hear the exchange, but Abi must have had her hand over the receiver. “He says he doesn’t care.”
“Fine.” Desperation gripped her. “Tell him I’m…putting on that black dress with all the buttons and a pair of fuck-me heels and I’m heading into town.”
There was a sigh in her ear, but Abi faithfully relayed the message. “He said that dress is completely ruined, since he ripped all the buttons off.”
Sal refused to be deterred. “Tell him I sewed every single one of them back on.”
Low voices again. “He said it’s impossible, considering he sucked half of them up in the vacuum cleaner and at least three fell down the sink.”
“Fine.” If she couldn’t tweak his jealous bone, she’d have to go for another one
of his weaknesses. “Tell him I’m going straight to my bedroom, taking all my clothes off, and spending the night with my vibrator collection, which happens to not only be extensive but a lot more fun with two.”
There was a pause. “You really want me to tell my brother that?”
Sal didn’t care how inappropriate it was—desperate times required desperate measures. “You can put him on if you’d rather.”
Another sigh in her ear, then more low conversation. “He says he took all the batteries out of your vibrators, so good luck with that.”
Sal blinked. “He did what?”
Abi laughed. “I think that was a bluff. I’d still check though, nothing worse than discovering a nonfunctioning vibrator at the worst possible time.”
Sal snorted. “Count on it.”
“What else you got?” Abi asked.
Sal wasn’t sure she was comfortable with how much enjoyment Abi seemed to be getting out of this little telephone tango. Still, she had a feeling she was going to like Doyle’s sister a lot if she ever got the chance to develop a relationship with her. Any woman with an appreciation for vibrators was her kind of gal.
Sal cast around for something that would well and truly push Doyle’s buttons. Something that would make him absolutely crazy. “Tell him I’m putting down this phone and ringing eyebrow dude.”
“Ooh?” Abi said. “Cute?”
“As a button. With a puppy.”
“Good move. I’m seriously starting to like you.”
Sal smiled despite her tenterhooks as she waited for the information to be passed on.
“Doyle says you threw his number in the bin.”
“Tell Doyle just because that’s what I told him I did doesn’t mean it’s what I actually did.”
Abi did as she was told. “He says bullshit,” she said a few seconds later.
“Tell him I’m looking at it right now.”
Sal’s ears strained to hear the low growl of Doyle’s voice. “He says you won’t do it.”
“Tell him there’s no reason for me not to now, is there?”
Abi told him. Sal didn’t have to strain anything to hear his explosive, “Fuck!” then Abi’s swift “little ears, Doyle” reprimand.
There was a bunch of muffled, static-like background noise. “What’s happening?” Sal asked.
“Brace yourself. He’s heading over.”
Sal almost sagged to the floor. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. He’s pretty pis…er, steamed.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
“No worries. But just for the record, if he comes back here with a broken heart I’m going to sneak into your place when you’re out and remove all those batteries.”
Sal nodded grimly. A woman who’d do anything for her brother—she liked Abi more and more. “Fair enough.”
…
Doyle seethed as he slammed his car into gear. He didn’t really think that even Sal would be as mercenary as her phone call had suggested, but he wasn’t rational where she was concerned. And he was prepared to break heads if that dude was anywhere near the clinic when he arrived.
Even if he was just innocently out walking his fucking dog.
The last two weeks had been hell, and he was looking at taking it out on someone more his size.
God, it was all so fucked up. And the really sad thing was that Doyle couldn’t even blame Sal for her reaction. How did someone get past the horror she’d been through to lead any kind of normal life? Losing her husband and baby had scarred her in ways he couldn’t see, and he’d known from very early that she was broken, just as he’d known the other night she was running scared.
But he had to draw a line in the sand somewhere. He wasn’t interested in a relationship with her unless she was all in.
Doyle pulled to the curb outside the practice and looked up at the facade, wondering what the hell she expected from him. Because if she thought he was going to take her crumbs, then she was sadly mistaken.
…
Doyle’s thundery “Open up” shot Sal’s nerves into the stratosphere. Abi was right—he was pissed.
She looked at the clock—twelve minutes. He wasn’t mucking around. Her hands trembled slightly as she reached for the door and opened it. His gaze raked her from head to toe, and she was pleased from his reaction that she’d changed into a strappy summery dress as soon as she’d hung up with Abi. He stood there looking all big and glowering and sexy in his cargoes and T-shirt that showed off his biceps and sat very distractingly against his flat abs. His chin cleft was an angry slash in his tight jawline.
Her heart did a jittery little tap dance in her chest as relief, cool and sweet, flooded her chest. He was angry, but he was here.
She loved him a little bit more just for that.
“You yanked my chain?” he inquired, his voice sugary sweet with that deceptively low rumble.
“Thanks for coming.”
“I take it eyebrow guy’s not here?” he said, pushing past her, prowling into the lounge room.
“No. But you came anyway.”
“Of course I came,” he snorted, turning to face her. “This is what you’ve turned me into. Some…pussy…doormat for you to crook your little finger at and I’ll come running. Why would you even taunt me with that crap?”
Sal took a step back. Okay. He was really pissed. “I’m sorry. It was the only thing I could think of to get you here.”
“Well, fine.” He ran a hand over his head. “I’m here.”
Sal nodded. “Thank you. Do you want a…beer or something?” She sure as shit could do with a bit of Dutch courage.
“I don’t want a goddamn beer,” he snapped.
Okay. Cold turkey it was. “I’m sorry. About what happened after the accident. I completely freaked out.”
“Yeah. I got that.”
“All I could see that night when I looked at you or when I shut my eyes was your face with blood dripping down it. Your eyes…dead and staring.”
He looked at her for long moments, then sighed deeply. He walked to the breakfast bar and sat on a stool. “You could have told me that,” he said tersely.
Sal took the stool next to him, setting it back a bit. “Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed this or not, but I don’t tend to talk about my stuff very much.”
“Yeah. I got that, too.”
“It really rattled me. I just kept thinking I can’t go through the pain of losing”—she looked down at her lap, at her folded hands, not brave enough to face him with the truth—“another man I love. Then that freaked me out even more because I haven’t loved anyone since Ben and that felt wrong…greedy and selfish and like I was betraying him. So I went to the cemetery today and I stood at that graveside and told Ben about you.”
“What did you tell him about me?”
Sal took a breath and looked up. His jaw wasn’t so tense anymore and the cleft in his chin looked positively lickable. “That I was…falling in love with you. That for so long I hadn’t wanted to count on a man again for anything other than some physical release, but you came into my life five months ago and no matter how much I bitched and griped and pushed you away, you refused to go.”
“Except when you asked me to.”
Sal nodded. “I’m sorry I pushed you away so often. That I threw your declaration of love back in your face that night and asked you to leave, but even if you’d never said the words, you’d proven yourself to me over and over just by sticking around. Mack always says that actions speak louder than words, and you’ve been there for me, just like Ben used to be.”
Sal watched as his hand came up and his fingers slid under her chin. He applied gentle pressure, and soon she was looking him square in the eye.
“But I’m not Ben, Sal. I’m me. And I love you. I don’t want to be some kind of substitute for him.” He dropped his hand, but the compelling depth of his gaze had her total attention. “I have to know that you love me. Doyle Jackson.�
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Sal’s heart banged so loudly in her chest she was sure he must be able to hear it. She stood and took one pace, walking between his legs and wrapping her arms around his big, gorgeous shoulders. His hands sliding onto her hips was encouraging.
“I love you, Doyle Jackson. I love this cleft”—she placed her index finger into it and stroked it a couple of times—“in your chin, and the way you fill out your jeans.”
She dropped her finger and slid her hand back onto his shoulders.
“I love how you are with Harry and your sister and I want to meet all of them. I love the way you are with Mrs. Carney and Boxer and Gemma and good Lord almighty I love watching you with kittens. I love how a tiny white mouse gives you the heebie-jeebies. I love the way your jaw gets all tense and your nostrils flare when you want to kiss me. I love how you get all he-man over guys who flirt with me. I love how determined you are. And the way your voice gets all rumbly when you’re turned on.”
Sal pressed her mouth lightly to his, pulling out quickly—no time to linger, no time to get distracted. “And God knows,” she sighed, “I love your mouth and all the ways it can drive me crazy. But please know that you and Ben are very different men to me, and while I will always love him—”
“I’m not asking you to stop loving him, Sal,” he interrupted. “I know he’ll always be part of your life.”
“I know,” she murmured. “And I will love Ben in the way women always love their first loves. But I love you like the woman I am now. Not the girl I was. I’m battered and bruised and I’m tougher, but I’m still here. I’m scared to death, but I’m more frightened of a life without you.”
“Don’t be scared,” he murmured, his hands slipping around her waist. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Standing in the circle of his arms, she believed him. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
He held her tighter. “So…just to clarify, what you’re saying is you love me?”
He grinned at her and Sal grinned back. Her belly looping crazy loops. “Yes, Doyle Jackson. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“You should say it again,” he said, his lips dropping to nuzzle her neck. “I like hearing those words come out of your mouth. I’m never going to get tired of hearing them.”