Once they learned the truth, they’d hate him.
Especially once they knew the truth about him and Sabrina. She’d tell them all that she’d been the one to dump him. Her reputation would be safe, she’d get all their sympathy, their support, their rah-rah offers to burn him in effigy. Oh, she was a sport—she’d defend him, but no matter how she couched it, he’d be the bad guy once again, the one who left, who abandoned his home. Who abandoned her.
At least they’d look after her. He wouldn’t have to worry that she’d be all alone, not anymore. He was glad for that.
Though the thought of returning to his sterile dog-eat-dog world, no friends, no home, no family, was too depressing for words. At least he had his work.
He’d go back to Granger-Ellis, creating beautiful dwellings, full of peace and contentment, for others. Always yearning for a place of his own, forever an outsider.
“I’ll be right back,” he whispered to Sabrina. Before she had a chance to respond, he made his escape.
As soon as he got out of earshot of the patio, Mitch’s lungs expanded again. He braced himself on a wooden arch leading to the farthest part of the garden. Sabrina’s mother had created a masterpiece of hidden corners, perfect for lovers. Or people who just needed to be alone.
He was losing it. He forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out. Della’s decision wasn’t final yet. He could still fix things. But he didn’t need to drag Sabrina into it any further. It was time to stop the charade. For God’s sake, her mom was talking about cakes! And bands!
“Mitch?”
He jerked his head up.
“There’s something going on, I can tell.” Sabrina led him to a bench where he sank down gratefully.
He put his head in his hands. “When will I learn?”
“Mitch, honey, quit it!” She forced his hands down and looked at him, concern on every line of her face. “Talk to me.”
Suddenly, between the worry and guilt and fatigue, he couldn’t help himself. He seized the back of her head and drew her to him fiercely, his other arm around her back, pressing her body to his. For one instant when their lips met, he felt resistance. Immediately after, however, Sabrina melted in his embrace and then it was all sensation, need, and desperation. They clung to each other, her grasping at his sleeves, pulling him nearer, him tugging the thin straps of her dress over her shoulders to reveal more of the creamy flesh beneath.
Like that earlier kiss that had so unsettled him, there was no artifice here. This was the real Sabrina, as she had been as a girl. Passionate and kind, generous to a fault. Knowing exactly what he needed, even when he didn’t know himself.
Even when it wasn’t right. With a groan, Mitch pulled back.
“Bree, honey, someone might see us.” He trailed his finger down the neckline of her dress beneath the thin straps that were all that held it up. He felt her quiver. Her nipples showed through the lacy fabric and damn if she wasn’t braless again.
“No,” she said, grasping his wrist. “Don’t stop.”
His body sang, but he forced himself to ask again. “Are you sure? Honey, there’s so much I haven’t told you—”
“Stop. Talking.” She hiked up her dress and straddled him on the bench. “The place is a jungle. Besides, everyone assumes we’ve gone out here for a little…couple time. Might as well enjoy it, right?”
“Right.” He wasn’t made of stone. At least, not all of him. Slowly, he moved his fingers along the top of her dress, pushing it lower, lower until one pert breast popped free, then the other. Sabrina gasped, but she didn’t move away.
Mitch sucked in a breath, drinking in the sight. There they were, bathed in moonlight, just as he remembered. If anything, her breasts were even rounder, more perfect, just the right amount of swelling above that wispy tease of fabric now bunched at her waist.
She leaned over him, kissing him firmly, letting her breasts fall into his hands, filling them. He ran his hands over the taut muscles of her back, the ridge of her spine, then back around to the softness in front.
“You’re so beautiful.” He pushed her away slightly. “Let me look at you.”
He drank in the sight of the miracle that was her. Then he looked closer. He saw a shadow, a dark mark, just beneath the lower curve of her left breast. A bruise? A scar?
He frowned. “What’s that?”
“Oh.” Slowly, Sabrina slipped off his lap and tugged the dress back up. “It’s…it’s nothing.”
He touched her chin, searching her face. “Bree?”
“It’s no big deal.” She closed her eyes, as if fighting back pain. “It’s just…a tattoo.”
Relief flooded over him. “A tattoo? On your ribs? I hear those hurt like a son of a bitch.”
An odd look crossed her face. “Men always underestimate the female capacity for pain. Yeah, it hurt. Yeah, I knew it would. Yeah, I got it anyway.”
He was curious what image she’d been so determined to have inked in such a relatively private area. Biceps and shoulders on men, the clichéd tramp stamp on women, people did that when they wanted to show off. Look at me, I’ve got a tattoo.
“Can I see it?”
She lifted her eyebrows.
He laughed and raised his hands. “Oh, come on. You’ve seen mine.”
She snorted. “Everyone’s seen yours; it’s on your arm. You just want to ogle my breasts again.”
“Can you blame me? Besides, my memory’s pretty bad. Maybe they’ve changed.”
A smile danced behind her eyes now. “Not in thirty seconds. Or do you mean since ten years ago? They’re pretty much the same. Maybe a little droopier, but then so is my ass. A decade’ll do that.”
“Babe, don’t kid yourself. You could still get any guy with a functional…brain. If anything, you’re even hotter now.” The banter was back between them, and it made him vastly more comfortable than whatever it was that had landed on them earlier. “But what’s the deal with your ink? Is it private? A secret?”
Her smile faded and her eyes shuttered. “Not…exactly.”
Mitch had tried not to think of her over the years, told himself that she was resilient, that he’d been no good for her anyway, that he hadn’t hurt her, he’d protected her from a lifetime of pain. Granger men were no good for women. But he felt a sudden suspicion that the past had left her just as damaged as he was.
Then she sighed and let the dress drop again, revealing milky-white skin, and all thought left his head.
A flower bud, and below it, in delicately scrolled lettering, a date.
Wait. He moved slightly so that the moonlight hit her more fully. He didn’t memorize dates, was terrible with anniversaries, but wasn’t that the year he left Three River Ranch?
Surely she wouldn’t have wanted that memory written on her body?
“What does it mean?”
She put her hands over her breasts. “It’s personal.”
“But the date on the bottom, wasn’t that the summer we…I…”
“Yeah. I remember, Mitch. We broke up. You left.” Her voice was clipped. “I hate to be the one to tell you, but there’s more to me than you know. There was even when we were together. And I kept writing my life story, even in my post-Mitch world.”
“So the dates are a coincidence, then?”
The way she was behaving made him certain that it was not a coincidence, but whatever the reason, she didn’t want to talk to him about it.
Then she sighed. “No. It’s not a coincidence. That was a pretty crazy summer. We were kids, dealing with too much.”
“More than we could handle, that’s for sure.”
“When I told you I’d lost the baby, I saw how relieved you were.”
He looked away, torn between protecting himself and being honest with her. “So what if I was? You weren’t ready to be a mother, Bree. You were terrified. When it turned out to be a false alarm, all I could think about was how close I’d come to ruining your life.”
“Ruining my l
ife?” She slapped him on the chest. “Mitch, you understand what I do, don’t you? Babies come when they come and they are all miracles!”
“But you had goals, dreams. A baby wouldn’t have fit into the picture.” I wouldn’t have fit into the picture. “You were only nineteen!”
“And now I’m twenty-nine!” The words burst out of her and with them, tears. “Every day I help women have babies and I’m nowhere near having one of my own. I had it once, I had it. So close, I can still feel it sometimes, just before I fall asleep at night, I can still feel the ghost of that child inside my body.”
She hugged her arms, shuddering, then slipped the dress back up. Mitch took off his jacket and settled it on her bare shoulders.
“I told you I lost the baby,” she said in a choked voice, “but I hadn’t.”
“What?” It took Mitch a second to catch up.
“I needed to see if you were just being dutiful. And you were. You lit out of here like you were on fire. So I did the right thing, not telling you.”
She was speaking too quickly. He couldn’t make sense of it.
Mitch’s arm slid off her shoulders. “What are you saying?” A vise ratcheted around his ribs, making each breath hot and short and tight, as if an actual knife had been plunged into his back. “You didn’t… You didn’t have the baby, did you?” If she’d given away their child he would go to the ends of the earth to bring him or her home.
“No. I wouldn’t do that. Listen—”
Another possibility occurred to him. He sprang to his feet and stumbled back, unable to look at her.
“You didn’t…”
She recoiled. “No! It’s the right choice for some women, Mitch, but not me. Never me.”
“Then what?” The rush of rage left him shaking. He turned to her, bracing himself against a wobbling trellis. He forced his fingers to relax before he broke it. “Sabrina. What are you trying to tell me? What happened after I left?”
She buried her face in her hands. He gave in to his trembling knees but this time, he kept space between them on the bench. But as her shoulders shuddered with silent sobs, he inched closer. Whatever happened had affected her deeply.
“Bree? Tell me.”
Finally she lifted her head and wiped her eyes. “I haven’t talked about this for so long.”
“Then it’s probably time, don’t you think?”
She tipped her head sideways, gave him a crooked smile. “Maybe. I just never imagined telling you about it.”
Chapter Ten
Memories washed over her. The pain, the overwhelming pain. The sorrow, the loneliness. She hadn’t told anyone about that time. She’d been about to…but that decision took a lot of guts and she hadn’t quite worked up to that yet.
“When I started spotting, I knew there was a good chance I’d lose it,” she explained to Mitch now. “So I told you that I already had.”
“And terrified the living shit out of me! What did I know about that kind of stuff? And it was all a lie? You were just testing me?”
Anger and confusion rolled off him in waves. His vulnerability twisted something inside her until she reminded herself that he’d left her. And was going to leave her again.
“Testing you? No. Not really. More like, I was giving you an out. And you took it.” She smiled to soften her words. “You grabbed on to it and ran. That’s how I knew it was the right thing to do.”
“You acted like it was nothing, so I did the right thing and got out of your life. But as soon as I left, I started going out of my mind! Were you really okay? Maybe I should have stayed a little longer. You wouldn’t take my calls so I finally phoned Bliss, to let her know where I was. I knew she’d tell me if anything…bad had happened since I was gone.” It was as if a plug had been dislodged, releasing a torrent. Sabrina touched his hand, but he shook it off. “She was still mad at me for leaving, so I knew you were alive. Finally I searched the Internet for information about miscarriages, trying to understand what happened. Most sites said it was a common occurrence, you’d probably be fine. Probably. But some said that you should seek immediate medical attention. Which I knew you hadn’t because you wanted to keep it secret!”
He paused and sucked in a few ragged breaths. “I was a stupid punk kid, Bree, and God! I was so angry! But deep down, I knew we’d lost something precious.”
New light broke on that whole ugly phase. She’d been so focused on her own pain it hadn’t occurred to her that he might be feeling something similar.
“I’m sorry,” she said weakly. “I didn’t think.”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t make sense of her words. “So you were prepared to go through with the pregnancy on your own? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? That I’d just leave you like that, alone, with a child? My child? You didn’t think much of me, did you?”
His voice was low, his posture beaten and defeated. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he’d been hurt enough already.
“It wasn’t like that, Mitch, I swear. I wasn’t really thinking at all. I barely made it through each day. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because a month later I did have a miscarriage.”
She stopped, thinking of it again. Those terrified weeks of facing single motherhood, the never-ending pain of being alone, missing him, weeping, seeing his name show up on the phone, picking it up, then setting it down unanswered. Sitting across the dinner table, pushing away her parents’ questions, pretending, always pretending that everything was okay.
She’d been so certain that setting Mitch free was the right thing to do, that she could handle everything just fine alone. Until she realized that she didn’t want to handle everything alone. She’d offered him a way out, but part of her wanted him to refuse! So she’d clung to her pain and resentment because it was less painful than accepting the fact that he’d moved on.
And then, waking up one night in a pool of blood, the buckling cramps, the certainty that the life she’d just begun to love had slipped away, silently, unknown, unremarked. But not unmourned.
“All by yourself?” He looked horrified. “Did you, I don’t know, have to go to the hospital?”
She shook her head. She’d just finished her first year of nursing school that last summer with him, the summer everything fell apart. So much had been unknown and frightening, but at least she had a basic grasp of—and respect for—the physiology of pregnancy. “I knew that if I didn’t stop bleeding, I’d have to see a doctor, but it stopped. It was an uncomplicated, complete spontaneous abortion.”
“But you were all alone. Sabrina—you could have died.”
His voice was so soft that she felt her chest constrict. “I was fine. I knew enough, even then, to handle it. I hadn’t told anyone but you that I was pregnant. I couldn’t go to anyone for help during a miscarriage.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
There it was again, the hurt.
“Mitch, we were kids. You remember how messed up we both were?” She touched his arm lightly. “It wasn’t meant to be. Look what you’ve done with your life. Look what I’ve done. It was awful, but I survived. And that’s what made me sure that I wanted to be a midwife. We both came out of that time in our lives with wonderful careers.”
“And you got a tattoo under your heart to commemorate it.”
She looked away. “That child was real to me.”
He reached for her hand and suddenly they were clinging to each other.
…
The anger and injustice and shame took his breath away. Sabrina spoke so simply, as if it was a thing in the past, no changing it, no harm, no foul. But the way she huddled against him, every muscle taut, made him wonder. Was she still protecting him?
So much welled up in him, memories he’d tried to run away from for so long. The way he could never meet his father’s expectations, the way little brother Carson always outshone him in school, with people, in everything. The way he’d taken refuge in Sabrina’s love, and her body, finding in her all the a
cceptance he’d craved at home. The sadness in his mother’s eyes that he could never quite forget, her mute pleading for him to be…what? Patient? Understanding? Less angry? A better person? Whatever it was, he hadn’t been able to give it to her.
But everything had collided in too short a time and it had been too much.
Is that how Sabrina had felt too? Her family life was good, perfect compared with his, at least. Maybe too perfect, he thought now. Her parents would have freaked out if they’d known she’d gotten pregnant. But he hadn’t thought of how the prospect might have felt to her, informing her parents that their brilliant daughter, their shining star, their pride and joy, was knocked up by a guy who’d barely scraped by with a high school diploma.
“Did we ever have a chance, Bree?” he said softly. “Couldn’t we have at least tried?”
He heard her catch her breath.
“A shotgun wedding, you mean? What kind of chance would that have been, Mitch? Both of us working minimum wage? Living in my parents’ basement?”
He winced at the savagery in her voice, but couldn’t argue.
“Or maybe we’d have both gone to Seattle or New York or LA or wherever you went first. That would have gone well, huh? A twenty-year-old wife and a baby would have really helped your career. Just as well I gave you an out.”
“Keep your voice down!” He glanced toward the house.
“Or what, Mitch? I’ll ruin your future? Again?”
“It was never like that with you, Bree. I only wish you hadn’t gone through that alone.”
He got to his feet and wiped his hands on the front of his dress pants, suddenly exhausted beyond reason. “I’ll go make our excuses.”
She shook her head. “No, wait. Sit.”
She put a hand on his leg. It was too dark to read her expression, but he could see the glow of the house lights and the moon and starlight reflected in the sparkle of her eyes as she looked at him.
She pulled him down beside her again. “I’m sorry, Mitch. About everything.” She slipped off her shoes and tucked her feet underneath her on the bench. He felt her sigh deeply, then shift closer, sliding against his chest, snuggling her face into his neck. He felt her trembling.
Fake Fiance, Real Revenge: A Three River Ranch Novel (Entangled Bliss) Page 13