by Ally Blake
“A surprise?” Elli folded the tea towel in her hands and draped it over the handle of the oven door. Curiosity got the better of her and she couldn’t resist asking, “What kind of surprise?”
“Just something I’ve been working on the last week or so.”
Elli’s mind whirred. The past week—that would be ever since the night they’d agreed to keep things platonic and he’d started spending more time in the fields and barns. What could he possibly have to surprise them with?
“Stay here, okay? I’ve got to bring it in.”
She wanted to refuse but couldn’t, not at the hopeful look he sent her before he spun and disappeared out the door.
She heard an odd clunking as he came back. “Close your eyes!” he called out from the porch, and she did, anticipation causing a quiver in her tummy. No one had surprised her in a very long time.
“Are they closed?” More clunking and thunking came from the entry.
Elli giggled. “Yes, they’re closed. But hurry up!”
Some shuffling and scraping and then Wyatt came back to the kitchen. “Bring Darcy,” he said, and Elli could see he was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. His Stetson was pushed back on his head, making him look even more young and boyish and very, very attractive.
She picked Darcy up out of her swing and said, “Okay. Lead on before you burst.”
He led the way into the living room. “What do you think?”
In the corner where the makeshift table had been now sat the most beautiful rocking chair Elli had ever seen. Stunningly simple, with a curved seat and perfect spindles along the back, painstakingly sanded and stained a beautiful rich oak. On the seat was a flowered cushion in blues and pinks.
A lump rose in her throat as she tried to think of the words to say. “It’s beautiful, Wyatt,” she murmured, holding tight to Darcy.
“I found it in the back shed, of all places,” Wyatt explained. He went to the chair and stood behind it, resting his hands on the back. “It was dirty and scratched, but it just needed some love. Some fine grit sanding and a few coats of stain.”
He had done this himself? With his hands? Somehow it meant much more knowing he hadn’t just gone to a store and picked it out. It almost felt … like a lover’s gift. But that was silly, wasn’t it? Who gave a lover a rocking chair? There was also the small matter of things being strictly friendly between them lately.
It felt intimate just the same.
“You did this?” The words came through her lips tight and strained. She tried to smile encouragingly to cover.
“It was a bit of a shock at first, you know,” he said, undaunted by her cool response. “When I came in and saw all the … well, the feminine touches around the place. I’ve been a bachelor a long time, Elli, but you didn’t deserve the criticism I doled out. And you know, I’ve gotten used to it.” His eyes danced at her. “Now I even like it. I wanted to make it up to you and didn’t know how. Then there it was and I realized you need a proper chair. Come and sit in it with Darcy.”
Elli’s knees shook now as she walked across the room. She hadn’t meant to make Wyatt uncomfortable in his own home, and his apology had made things right. He didn’t need to do this. She was touched.
“I didn’t mean to overstep,” she whispered.
“You didn’t. You just had the sense to do what I wouldn’t do for myself. Come on,” he cajoled, giving the chair a little rock. “I’ve tried it. It’s stable, I promise.”
For days she’d lamented a comfortable seating arrangement for feeding the baby or for soothing her as she fussed. She’d remembered the chair she’d bought and returned while expecting William, and wished she had something similar, especially when Darcy seemed particularly difficult to soothe and Elli’s back ached from leaning against the headboard of Wyatt’s bed. But her reaction now was immediate and frightening. Grief and longing hovered on the edge of her heart as she was faced with the actual object rather than the thought. She inhaled deeply, struggling for control. How could she refuse to sit in it when Wyatt was looking so pleased with himself? And he deserved to be.
She could do this. She could stay in control. She sat tentatively on the seat, the weight of Darcy in her arms awkward in a way it hadn’t been since the very first day. Her shoulders tensed as she leaned against the back. “It’s wonderful, Wyatt. Thank you.”
But he’d gone quiet behind her, as if he’d sensed something wasn’t quite right. “You’re tense,” he observed, and his hands settled on her shoulders. “What’s wrong?” His fingers kneaded gently, trying to work out the knots that had formed. And as he moved his hands, the chair began to rock.
Elli looked down into Darcy’s contented face, saw the blue eyes looking up at her, unfocused, the tiny, perfectly shaped lips, and in the breath of a moment her control slipped and everything blurred.
Once the tears started, Elli couldn’t make them stop. The chair tipped forward and back but each movement pushed the tears closer to the edge of her lashes until the first ones slid down her cheeks. She caught her breath on a little hiccup, trying desperately to get a grip on her emotions.
But the memory was so utterly real that she lost the battle.
“Elli … my God, what is it?” Wyatt came around from behind the chair and knelt before her. He swept the Stetson from his head and put it on the couch beside them. Her heart gave a lurch at the action, gentle and gallant. His face loomed before hers, his eyes shadowed with concern. She did love him. There was no way she could have avoided it. Knowing it was one-sided, on top of the pain already slicing into her, only increased the despair cresting over her.
“It’s just … just that …” She gasped for breath and felt another sob building. “The last time I rocked … it was …”
But she couldn’t finish. Her mouth worked but no words came out. Only an oddly high, keening sound as she sat in the chair he’d made for her and finally fully, grieved for the son she’d lost.
It had been William in her arms, her son, unbearably small but perfectly formed, painstakingly bathed by the nurses and swaddled in the white-and-blue flannel of the hospital. No breath passed his lips; his lashes lay in rest on his pale cheeks. But she had held him close and rocked him and said goodbye.
Wyatt reached for Darcy, but Elli held on unreasonably, turning her arm away from Wyatt’s prying hands. “No! Don’t take him yet. You can’t take him yet.”
Then her ears registered what she’d said and she broke down completely with shame and grief. Wyatt took Darcy gently from her now unresisting arms and laid her on the play mat on the floor.
When he returned, he simply bent and lifted Elli out of the chair, an arm around her back and the other beneath her knees, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. She clung to his hard, strong body, putting her arms around his neck and pressing her forehead against it. He went to the sofa and sat, holding her in his lap. “Let it out,” he whispered against her hair, and she felt him kiss the top of her head. “For God’s sake, Elli, let it out.”
She did, all the while clinging to his neck as the pain and anger and grief finally let loose. This was what she’d held in for months, trying to keep up appearances, determined to show the world she could function. It had been building all this time, brought to the surface by loving Darcy as she cared for her, and now spilled over by loving Wyatt, by trusting him.
And she did trust him. Even if he never returned her love, she knew she trusted him completely. In all her life she’d never known a better man. Gradually her breaths slowed, grew regular, and exhaustion and relief made her limbs limp and relaxed. He felt good, solid. Tim had scoffed at her tears, turning her away. Perhaps that had been his way of handling the grief—by not showing it at all—and she’d been forced to hold it in, too. With Wyatt there was no pretending. She could be who she had to be.
“I didn’t know,” Wyatt said softly, once she was in firm control. His hand rubbed over her upper arm, soothing and warm. “How long have you been holding
that in?”
Elli sighed, her eyes still closed so she could focus on the feel of him, warm and firm, the way his fingers felt through the fabric of her sweater. “Thirteen months.”
Over a year. William had been gone over a year and she suddenly knew she was no closer to being over it than she’d been then. She’d only gone through the motions.
Darcy lay on the floor, looking up at the colors and shapes of the baby gym above her. Watching her caused a bittersweet ache to spread through Elli’s chest. She missed the opportunities most. The opportunity to see her son grow, change, to be able to love him and see the light of recognition in his eyes at the sound of her voice or the touch of her hands.
“I had been waiting so long to have my baby,” she confessed, finally giving words to the pain. “I never had the chance to learn with him. To feed him or change him or rock him to sleep. I imagined what it would be like for months, but theory is different than practice.” She tried to smile, but it wobbled. “And then you showed up with Darcy …” Her voice trailed off, uncertain.
He lifted his head and looked at her face. Oh, she knew she looked dreadful. She rushed to wipe at her cheeks, to smooth her messed hair. But Wyatt didn’t seem to care about her appearance. He never had. He raised his left hand and wiped away the moisture beneath her eyes with the pad of his thumb.
He touched her cheek softly, cupping her jaw lightly in his hand and applying gentle pressure so she would turn her face toward him. “It was a boy,” he said, and she remembered what she’d blurted out in the chair.
For a moment it had been as if she was back in the hospital with William instead of there in the living room with Darcy.
Wyatt kept a firm hold on his emotions. There was more going on with Elli than he had ever dreamed and somehow the chair had set her off. He’d done the only thing he could—held her until the storm was over. She tried to turn away, but he kept his fingers firm on her face. “Elli?”
“Yes, he was a boy,” she whispered, and he caught the glimmer of remnant tears in the corners of her eyes. Her teeth worried her lower lip.
And if she knew it was a boy, it meant she’d carried him long enough to know. How long? Months, certainly. He couldn’t comprehend what that must be like, to carry a life and then just … not. He thought she’d told him that she had miscarried. But it didn’t add up, not now. When a person thought of miscarriage, they thought of pregnancies ended in the early stages, the first few months. To know her baby was a boy, and the rocking chair today … It didn’t take much effort to connect the dots.
“You were further along in your pregnancy than you let me believe, weren’t you?” He said it gently, urging her to talk. She clearly needed to. And he wanted to listen. Not because he felt obligated in any way but because there was something about Elli that reached inside him. He couldn’t explain it, or quantify what or why. He just wanted to. He wanted to help her the way she’d helped him.
“I was six weeks to term,” she murmured, and the tears that had been sitting in the corners of her eyes slid silently down her cheeks. “My water broke and I knew it was too early. It should have been okay. We just thought he’d be small, and spend some time in the neonatal unit.”
It took her a few seconds to collect herself. “There was an additional problem with his lungs we hadn’t known about, a defect. I …”
She stopped, lowered her head.
“You don’t have to say it,” he said gently, feeling his heart quake for her. He’d been hiding out in the barns and thinking only of himself, first to escape the false domesticity she was providing and then thinking how proud he’d be to present her with that stupid chair to make up for hurting her feelings. He’d thought about making it easier for her to care for Darcy, and a way to say thank-you, since she had yet to cash the check he had written. It had hurt, brushing her aside and insisting they keep things platonic. If circumstances were different, he would have pursued her.
She was the first person he’d willingly told about his past, and it hadn’t been easy. But his pain was nothing compared to hers. His loss was nothing when held up to the loss of a child.
She carried on, even though he could barely hear the whispered words. “I never got to hear him cry.”
There was a plaintive plea in her words and he tightened his arms around her. “I’m so sorry.”
“I thought I was over it more than this,” she whispered. She wasn’t fighting his embrace, and he settled more deeply into the cushions. Her weight felt good on his lap, holding her the way he’d wanted to for days. Just being close to her, connected, felt right.
“Sometimes it takes people years to really grieve.” He sighed, knowing how long it had taken him to accept that his mother was truly gone. It had been just recently that he’d made peace with it. And only then that he’d been able to sort out his life and know what he really wanted. This ranch was that resolution put into action. A testament to his mother’s faith in him and finally his faith in himself.
“Back in Calgary, everyone kept asking how I was doing. I could never answer them honestly. I had to put on a smile and give them some stock response.”
“And your husband?”
“Grief either brings you together or drives you apart. Our relationship didn’t have the right foundation, and it didn’t weather the stress of it. Tim buried himself in work and I …”
When she paused, Wyatt gave her hand a squeeze. She was being brave, though he doubted she knew it.
“I built myself a shell.”
Wyatt smiled. “Oh, I can relate to that, all right.”
And finally, a smile in return, with puffy lips and red-rimmed eyes. “I guess you probably can.” Then the smile faded.
“Ain’t life something?” Wyatt shrugged. “I realized a while back that it’s not the disaster that defines a person, Elli. It’s what you do afterward that counts.”
“And I haven’t done anything.” Her eyebrows drew together. “I’ve just put it all off.”
“There’s always today. Today’s a good day to make a new start.”
Wyatt knew what he wanted her to say. That this platonic relationship was a waste of time. That she would make a new start with him once Darcy went home. Barbara’s doctors reported she was doing well and soon Darcy would be going home. There wouldn’t be a social worker standing in their way.
“I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that yet. I just … oh.” Her voice caught again. “I miss him,” she said simply.
“No one said you had to do it overnight,” he replied, disappointed. “But making a start—and getting it all out, if that’s what it takes—is good.”
“You’re a good man, Wyatt Black.”
She cupped his face in her hands and he felt her blue gaze penetrate. Even with the evidence of crying marring her face, he could honestly say he wanted her, more than he’d ever wanted a woman. It was deeper than a simple physical need. His gaze dropped to her lips and back up again and he saw acknowledgment in her eyes. “Not as good as you think,” he murmured. His resolution was forgotten when faced with her sweet vulnerability.
Her fingers still framed his face and he leaned forward, needing to touch her, taste her, wanting to somehow make things right for her in the only way he knew how.
He put his lips over hers and kissed her softly, wanting to convince her to open up to him that little bit more. For a few seconds she seemed to hold her breath, and the moment paused, like standing on a ledge of indecision.
But then she relaxed, melting into him, curling into his body as her mouth softened, warm and pliable beneath his. As his body responded, he wondered how in hell any man in his right mind could have let her go.
Elli heard the small sound of acquiescence that escaped her throat as Wyatt took control of the kiss. Oh, his body felt so hard, so reassuring. He knew everything now and he wasn’t running, he wasn’t changing the subject. He was a man in a million, and he was kissing her as if she was the most cherished woman on the planet.
She melted against him, letting him fold her in his arms as he shifted his weight on the sofa. Want, desire such as she hadn’t felt in months slid seductively through her veins.
His body pressed her into the cushions and she welcomed the weight, feeling at once wanted and protected. As his mouth left hers and pressed kisses to her cheeks, down the sweep of her jaw, she suddenly understood that she wasn’t cold, or standoffish, or any of the things Tim had accused her of. She had simply been waiting. Waiting for the right person to come along and set her free.
And she was. As Wyatt’s mouth returned to hers, she slid her hands over his hips and up beneath his shirt, feeling the warm skin beneath the cotton.
His hips pressed against her and her blood surged.
“Elli …”
“Shhh,” she replied, touching her lips to his neck and feeling his pulse pounding there. She licked along the rough skin, tasting, feeling pleasure not only in what he was doing to her but from knowing what she was doing to him. After months of feeling powerless, it was liberating, affirming, and she craved more.
Wyatt pushed against the arm of the sofa with his hands so that he was looking down into her face. Elli noted with satisfaction that his breath came in ragged gasps and his lips were puffed from kissing.
“I definitely need a new couch,” he murmured, his voice a soft growl. “Not here. My bed.”
Taking it to the bedroom was a logical next step and one Elli thought she was ready for, but a thread of nervousness nagged. “But Darcy …”
“Has fallen asleep on her play mat.”
He looked into her eyes, took one hand and slid it over the curve of her breast.
It was almost impossible to think when he was touching her like that, and thinking was starting to sound quite overrated.
She ran her hand over the back pocket of his jeans and offered the challenge with her eyes.
In a quick move Wyatt was off her, and she felt the lack of him immediately. It was quickly replaced by exhilaration as he scooped her off the sofa and carried her down the hall to the bedroom. Once inside, he laid her on the bed, sat beside her and began unbuttoning his shirt.