Her Secret Valentine

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “Why not?” she demanded.

  Cal struggled to remain calm as their glances held. “Because if I did, it would make everything bad and selfish that anyone’s ever thought about me absolutely true.”

  Chapter Eight

  Ashley Stared at Cal, barely able to believe what she was hearing. “Who thinks bad things about you? Cal, you are the most compassionate, wonderful, giving man I have ever met!”

  A haunted look appeared in Cal’s gray eyes. “Maybe that’s who I am now,” Cal acknowledged, with a derisive shrug of his broad shoulders. He rubbed a hand across the front of the cashmere sweater he had put on for dinner with her mother. “But it’s hard to erase the past.”

  Ashley took a deep breath to steady herself. He was standing so close to her she could feel the heat emanating from his tall, strong body. “Where is this coming from?” she probed gently.

  Cal remained silent, as if he could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t make him look even worse in his wife’s eyes. She gave him a look that reminded him this was why she was here with him now, why they’d declared a temporary moratorium on sex. So they could start sharing all the stuff they’d been deliberately withholding from each other and really get to know each other, flaws and all.

  “It started after my dad died,” Cal said finally. He walked over to examine a basil plant on the windowsill that looked to be suffering from lack of care. He plucked off a few brown leaves, added a small amount of water. “At least I think that’s when it did.”

  Ashley watched him throw the leaves into the kitchen trash can. “Keep going.”

  “You have to understand.” Noting the can was nearly full, Cal lifted out the bag and tied it shut. He carried it outside to the cans and put it in. Ashley followed. “It was a very rough time.” Cal grabbed a couple of logs for the fireplace while they were out there. Ashley held the door for him as they walked back inside. “We were all so stunned by what had happened,” Cal continued as he took the logs over and put them in the basket next to the mantel. “There was no warning.” Cal rose, dusted off his hands. “One day my dad left on a business trip. The next day we got a phone call, saying the plane he was on had gone down in the mountains, and there were no survivors.”

  Ashley could only imagine how terrible that had been.

  “My mom, who had always been so strong, was a complete wreck. She had six kids, ranging in age from six to sixteen. The love of her life had just died and she was devastated.”

  As had been her children, Ashley noted.

  “We all went into survival mode.” Cal walked back into the kitchen to wash his hands, Ashley at his side. “Mac became the head of the household because he was the oldest son. My mother focused on sorting out my father’s affairs, which were a mess, because my dad died without a will.” Cal shook his head, remembering. “It took months to get everything straightened out,” he related sadly. “And during that time, my mother kept telling us everything was going to be fine, we just had to gather up our courage and go on. And that’s when the trouble began.”

  “Why?”

  The brooding look was back in his eyes, stronger than ever.

  Cal sighed and rubbed at the tense muscles in the back of his neck. “Because while Mac struggled to help my mom with the financial details, I tried to follow my mother’s example of keeping a stiff upper lip and make my four younger siblings toughen up enough to carry on, too.” A mixture of regret and self-admonition filled his low tone. “There weren’t going to be any tears when I was around,” he mocked himself bitterly. “And oh, by the way, since our life was supposedly worry-free financially, I intended to go on the week-long eighth-grade spring break trip to Washington, D.C.” Cal sighed, drew in a long, defeated breath. “My mother didn’t want me to go. I thought it was because it involved a plane ride from Minneapolis to D.C. and, at that point, she didn’t want any of us on planes. But I felt unfairly hemmed in and kept pushing and pushing to do what I wanted.”

  Ashley felt a soul-deep ache at the pain in Cal’s voice. “Tell me more…” she said softly.

  Cal shook his head, recalling, his mood as bleak as the overcast winter evening outside. “And all the while I was taking out my own hurt and fear and frustration on my younger sibs.” His eyes collided with Ashley’s once again. “Until one day, I barely recognized myself,” he told her sorrowfully. “And neither did my family.

  “And that was when my mother stepped in,” Cal continued in a low voice, “I had made poor little six-year-old Joey cry and my mother was furious. She took me aside and demanded to know where my heart was! How had I gotten so selfish? And above all, why couldn’t I please understand that we just didn’t have the money to send me on the eighth-grade trip?”

  Ashley’s brow furrowed. “You knew that and you still asked?” This didn’t sound like the Cal she knew at all. He was selfless to the bone.

  Cal turned his glance heavenward, shook his head in mounting remorse. “That was the hell of it—I didn’t know. In the wake of my dad’s death, my mother hadn’t bothered to reveal to any of us, save Mac, how severe our financial troubles were. And that made me even more furious—because if I had been given all the information, I would never have asked to go on that trip or been such a jerk about it.”

  Ashley’s heart went out to him as she touched his wrist. She looked up at him and commiserated gently, “I can see where you would be hurt and angry, being excluded that way.” She certainly would have been!

  Cal, however, didn’t look as if he felt his behavior was all that justified, despite his lingering frustration with the way his family situation had unraveled back then. “And I was especially mad at Mac,” Cal continued ruefully. “I knew my mother had been trying to protect me, but he had no excuse.”

  So Helen got a pass, as far as Cal was concerned, Ashley realized.

  Cal’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “But Mac had to know that, at fourteen, I was man enough to handle that information.” Resentment clouded his eyes. “Mac said he was bound by the promise he had made to my mother to shield us from worry. But I felt he owed me, too, that he should’ve done what was right by the family, taken me aside and told me the truth about our family’s precarious financial situation.”

  Ashley saw his point. Deep down, she knew Cal could have handled the news—if he’d been given the opportunity.

  “I had a hard time forgiving him for that, though I eventually did it. But I also told him never to cut me out of the loop again.”

  Only Mac hadn’t kept his word, Ashley realized with dismay. Because Helen Hart’s secret was not the only one Cal’s brother had been forced to keep.

  “Anyway,” Cal continued soberly, unaware of Ashley’s sinking feeling of dread, “the way I was that year made me realize that I could easily be the most selfish SOB around if I let myself. I decided not to let myself.”

  “I understand not liking who’ve you become or started to become,” Ashley retorted carefully. “I’ve had my moments, too.” She knew all about deeply held regrets—the guilt and second-guessing of events, for she had suffered the same. Not like Cal, in her childhood, but in their marriage.

  “But I don’t get what all that has to do with me,” Ashley continued, after a moment.

  “You asked me what I wanted you to do about your job,” he reminded her heavily. “You want to know the truth?”

  Did she? Reassuring herself that she could handle whatever it was he was about to say, Ashley swallowed around the sudden parched feeling in her throat. “Yes.”

  He drummed his fingers on the gleaming stainless-steel stovetop. “I’ll tell you,” he offered in a way that made her heart skip first one beat, then another. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  Ashley flushed under the heat of his regard. She backed up against the counter on rubbery legs, her hands braced on either side of her. She tilted her head at him in silent challenge. “How do you know?”

  Cal compressed his lips together ruefully. “Because it�
�s practically Neanderthal it’s so damn selfish,” he said, eyeing her with a depth of male speculation she found very disturbing. He jammed his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t want you working anywhere that we can’t live together in the same house and sleep together every night. I don’t want to be second fiddle to your career. And I don’t want you being secondary to mine, either.” He paused, looking her up and down, from the top of her casually upswept hair to her toes. “I want us—our marriage, our family—to come first. Now and always, even if that means that we both sacrifice some future career success for the sake of our family!”

  Doing her best to keep a level head, Ashley folded her arms in front of her. She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks even as she struggled to get hold of her soaring emotions. “Have you always felt this way—or is it just recently?” she demanded, not sure if she felt aggravated or relieved by his matter-of-fact confession.

  Cal leveled his assessing gaze on hers and kept it there. “Always, I am ashamed to say.”

  Ashley blinked, not sure if she wanted to hug him or slug him as she stammered, “But you never—”

  Cal held up a hand. “Because it would have been wrong to hold you back,” he interrupted gruffly.

  Now he was sounding like her parents. Aware she wouldn’t be able to bear it if she ended up being a failure in his eyes, too, she said, “You want to see me succeed. Just like my parents do.”

  “Yes,” Cal admitted, closing the distance between them and taking her into his arms. Holding her against the warmth of his tall, strong body, he gently stroked her cheek. “But I also want you in my life. I want you here with me…too,” he told her softly.

  Ashley had no doubt he was speaking from his heart. She shook her head, regretting all the time they had spent apart. “I wish you had told me this,” she whispered unhappily.

  He tightened his hold on her possessively. “Why?”

  “Because,” Ashley pushed her hands against his chest in escalating frustration, aware she had already endured more disappointment in one lifetime than she had ever expected to endure, “I’ve wished we could put us first, too! Damn it, Cal, I missed you so much the entire time I was in Hawaii.” And had they just been honest with each other, he would have known it!

  He grinned victoriously, looking as if he’d had an enormous weight moved from his shoulders. “And here I thought I was the only one who had to force myself to be positive about the separation.”

  Joy flowed through her in enervating waves, as she realized they had been on the same page after all! Most of the time, anyway. She wreathed her arms about his neck, hitched in a quick, bolstering breath. “But we don’t have to be separated anymore.” She studied him hopefully. “Do we?”

  He looked down at her as if he loved every inch of her. Misunderstandings and all. “Not if I can help it,” he promised in a low, gruff voice.

  He lowered his head. The next thing Ashley knew they were kissing. Passionately. Tenderly. Hungrily. She curled her fingers into his hair and surged against him, loving the taste and touch and wonder of him. She could feel his arousal, pressing hard against her, as surely as her own blossoming need. And yet, underneath her love for him was her ever-present fear that letting her guard down all the way was risking his discovery of her past mistakes. Errors in judgment that a family-oriented man like Cal might find very hard, if not downright impossible, to forgive. And she couldn’t bear it if he looked at her with the same disappointment and disillusion her parents always did.

  Trembling, Ashley ended the kiss and pulled away. Their marriage was healing—not dissolving—and she was not going to lose Cal, she reassured herself. He was not going to find out about the terrible secret she had kept from the very first days of their marriage; he was not going to discover the lengths she had gone to protect him.

  Mistaking the reason for her sudden withdrawal from their steamy embrace, Cal sighed. Apology radiated in his dark-gray eyes.

  He obviously wanted to make love as much as she did.

  He chuckled cheerfully and tossed her a playful glance that raised her pulse another notch. “We better think of something else for us to do fast, if we don’t want to end up doing what we’ve always ended up doing.”

  Making wild, passionate love. “Well.” Ashley thought out loud, her confidence building. “We could try to have fun.” She grinned impishly as she thought about the possibilities of the Thursday evening ahead, the joy of just having time to spend with him again. “Some other way,” she added, hoping for a little inspiration. Because heaven knew all she could think about were the broad shoulders straining against his cashmere sweater, and how it felt to be enveloped in their seductive warmth.

  Cal seemed to be struggling with the same feelings, even as his eyes lit with mischief. “And I know just the thing.”

  “HIDE-AND-SEEK!” Ashley regarded Cal in amazement. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  He wasn’t.

  Ashley threw up her hands. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she declared.

  One hand around her waist, he tugged her close and nibbled playfully on her ear. “Afraid you’re going to lose?”

  “Hardly,” Ashley murmured back, trying not to notice how good it felt—how good it always felt—to be in his arms this way.

  He lifted his brow. The mischief sparkling in his eyes brought out an answering devilry in her. “Well, you should be afraid to lose, sweetheart. You don’t know this house half as well as I do.”

  She tossed her head, already thinking ahead to ways to beat the pants off him. “Even so,” she drawled in the most bored tone she could manage, egging him on in the same way he was deliberately baiting her, “it wouldn’t be much of a challenge.”

  He chuckled in anticipation of the competition. “And you always have to be challenged.”

  Ha! Ashley slapped her hands on her hips and countered indignantly, “Like you don’t!”

  “True.” Cal pulled the kitchen timer out of a drawer and tossed it to her. “Best two out of three.”

  Her breath hitched in her chest. “And the prize?” Ashley asked.

  Cal shrugged and flashed her an impertinent grin. “Whatever the winner wants.”

  Ashley knew what she wanted—Cal, and their marriage the way it had been at the very first, before their careers had gotten in the way. “Agreed, as long as it doesn’t involve seeing me naked,” Ashley cautioned.

  He had to think about that. But only for a minute. “All right.”

  She imagined he was thinking of myriad ways to get around that. “I don’t trust that grin.”

  “As well you shouldn’t,” he told her significantly, the recklessness in him spurring the wildness in her. “I’ll step outside the front door. You’ve got three minutes to hide. And I’ve got the same amount of time to find you.”

  “Okay.”

  Not surprisingly, he won the first round.

  She won the second.

  The third time they both ended up in the coat closet tucked under the stairs. In just under three minutes, darn it. Which meant…. “Okay,” Ashley said breathlessly, as he shut them in there together. “You win, bucko. So what do you want?”

  “This,” Cal said.

  One long, hot kiss that went on and on, until her lips were parting under the onslaught, and she was meeting him touch for touch, stroke for stroke. Until she was moaning softly in her throat and clinging to him helplessly. Until she knew—as did he—that old hurts were healing and their marriage really was on the road to recovery.

  Chapter Nine

  Ashley rushed down the back stairs at seven the next morning, clad in her pink and white flannel robe and slippers. “Cal, have you seen my black dress?”

  Cal tore his gaze from her cleavage visible in the V of the shawl collar. No doubt about it, Ashley’s body was a hell of a lot more voluptuous than it had been five pounds ago. Not that he’d had opportunity to investigate the changes for himself, as she had refus
ed to let him her see her in any form of undress since they’d reunited a week ago.

  “Cal!” Ashley said again, even more impatiently this time.

  Cal struggled to recall what the question had been. With little result. “Um…”

  Ashley came closer, until she was standing right next to him. She smelled of soap and shampoo and the orange blossom perfume she wore. And unless he was wrong, she didn’t have much of anything on under that calf-length robe, definitely not a bra.

  “It’s the kind of stretchy one,” Ashley continued jogging his memory deliberately. “I wore it the first night back when we went over to your Mom’s to see the family. I can’t find it anywhere.”

  And with good reason, Cal thought, since it was currently with the dressmaker, who was making the dress Ashley would wear when they renewed their wedding vows. Stalling for time, he gave the scrambled eggs another stir. “Did you check the wash?”

  Noting breakfast was almost ready, Ashley went to the fridge and brought out the milk, butter and jam. Her arms full, she shut the door with her hip. Watching her lower half in action made him want to groan. He was still aroused from their extended kissing session the evening before. But a promise was a promise, and he had sworn he would demonstrate to her there was a lot more to their relationship than simply sex.

  “I didn’t put it in the wash.” Ashley popped slices of whole grain bread into the four-slice toaster they’d gotten years ago, as a wedding gift.

  Cal shrugged, as he cut a grapefruit in half and put the halves on plates. “Well then it probably wouldn’t be there.”

  Scowling, Ashley sat down at the table while he dished up the eggs and sat down opposite her. “I wanted to wear it today.”

  “Well…” Cal tried to think of a way to get her off the subject, as he pointed to the small TV mounted under one of the cabinets. It was tuned to a morning news show, and the local weather map was on the screen. “You should probably wear slacks anyway. If the snow that they’ve predicted hits later this afternoon, you’re not going to be want to be caught in a dress, anyway.”